FEATURE: Modern Heroines: Part Eighty-One: Bree Runway

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern Heroines

 PHOTO CREDIT: Conor Cunningham 

Part Eighty-One: Bree Runway

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AS one of the three nominees…

for this year’s Rising Star prize at the BRITs (the winner will be announced on 10th December), I wanted to shine a light on Bree Runway. Although she is a relatively new artist on the block. I feel she is a future icon and someone who is going to have an incredible future. I will come to a few interviews in a minute, so that we can find out more about her intentions, background and power. The 2000and4Eva mixtape was released last year. I believe Bree Runway is planning an album next year, though she has released/appeared on songs since her mixtape came out. I want to illustrate a positive review of Bree Runway’s incredible mixtape. This is what The Forty-Five had to say about a fantastic release:

“Bree Runway’s YouTube channel description reads: ‘it’s like Lady Gaga and Lil Kim had a love child”. Writing about Bree already feels like writing about a star like Gaga, and that’s not just because she recently covered ‘Paparazzi’, though her performance cements what we already knew: the pop kingdom is Bree’s for the taking.

‘2000And4Eva’ is more than a love letter to the year 2000 – the record illuminates a path between eighties/nineties pop and female pop artistry of today. The nine tracks flaunt Bree’s hard graft in mixing genres and generations to invent something fresh, a mission the self-defined ‘alternative black girl’ first embarked on with a self-released debut EP in 2015. Back then, her DIY creative spirit and visual edginess shone out from her Hackney bedroom. By 2017 she was dancing on stage with Years & Years’ Olly Alexander. By 2018, she’d signed to EMI.

A dedicated scholar of MTV, Bree is steeped in the aura of past decades. The theatrics of Madonna and Kiss, the gated reverb of Phil Collins, a Grace Jones flamboyance, sitcom scenes, chunky pink phones, leather jackets and leg-warmers: eighties cues sit alongside rap and r’n’b wisdom from artists like Missy Elliott and Timbaland.

Yet Bree’s songs are never trapped by nostalgia. Watch the ‘Damn Daniel’ music video and you start to believe she actually invented the eighties. The best song on the mixtape, it’s also a strong contender for best pop song of 2020, so dangerously catchy you’ll find yourself singing “if you fuck with him, he’ll fuck all your friends” aloud in the supermarket. The final minute of ‘Damn Daniel’ is possibly the most glorious minute of pop this year. ‘4 Nicole Thea & Baby Reign’ is a brief but emotional tribute to a lost friend, while ‘Little Nokia’ bleeds together rap and crunchy guitar, Claire’s Accessories in grown-up song form, chains, spikes and all. Elsewhere, her lines range from the funny – “Snatchin’ everybody wigs, now they look like thumbs” – to the all-out flex: “He only hit me with a tеxt when he want that goddess-level sex”. Bree doesn’t take herself seriously – and she takes herself as seriously as death.

‘Apeshit’, the single that snared praise from Missy Elliott, finds nice significance in sharing mixtape space with ‘ATM’, which Missy actually guests on, but it’s testament to Bree’s artistic strength that this isn’t even the most important moment on the record. On ‘Rolls Royce’ she draws out the n-word just long enough to remind you of that black square you posted on Instagram in June. This year, while everyone was busy pledging ‘to understand’, Bree got on with squaring up to the obstacles in her way through sheer talent and determination.

‘2000and4Eva’ is not very long, and we already know four of its tracks. We want an album! But Bree Runway already carries herself like a star: she doesn’t need to rush. She’s busy blasting aside the expectations of her race and gender, seeing how many boxes she can rip open before deciding what to do with their contents. Watch out, Gagas and Dua Lipas of the world: Bree Runway is on her way. Actually, she’s already here”.

The first interview takes us back to late last year. DIY inducted Bree Runway into their Class of 2021. Among other things, Bree Runway talked about putting her mixtape together. There is a real sense of confidence and excitement that comes through when she speaks:

“And it shows. For ‘2000AND4EVA’, Bree amassed a small crew of exciting female artists to jump on her songs (Rico Nasty and Maliibu Miitch, alongside Tate and Missy) - women who celebrate their differences and won’t be defined by industry standards.

“When you’re stepping out into music, you can think, ‘I better do what people would like and I better do what’s popular’,” she says of her earlier, R&B-focused sound. “But again, the choice thing: if it doesn’t feel good and it doesn’t feel completely natural to you, then don’t do it. I’m so much more than what I was doing when I first started. The amount of people that listen to me, the different countries, the amount of fan accounts... The conversations are different, the opportunities are different, everything is different. That saying is true: when you work hard for a year, things can really really change.”

Being a pop star in 2021 is harder than it was twenty years ago. In the early noughties, Lady Gaga could control the image she projected to the world, not setting foot outside without an encasing of bubble wrap, a dress made of flesh or, at the very least, a really, really uncomfortable pair of shoes. It all helped build the cult of Gaga. But in an always-on social media age where everyone, famous or not, is expected to share constantly, is that level of stardom still achievable?

PHOTO CREDIT: Hannah Diamond

“There’s a Bree Runway gloss, and I love my stuff looking star-studded, but sometimes I don’t mind breaking out of character and showing people how silly I am or how funny in a very non-corny way, because I actually am really funny, aren’t I?”

Oh. We’re supposed to answer. “Yes, yes. You’re really funny, yes.” It’s the only hint we’ve had all day that Bree needs any kind of validation. We’re kind of flattered.

Watching her glide through today’s photoshoot, directing the photographer, stylist and make-up artist, it’s obvious we’re seeing a real visionary at work - someone whose career is going to twist and turn in lots of exciting, unforeseen ways. With artists like Rihanna and Madonna building business empires alongside their musical output, is Runway Enterprises something we can expect in future?

“Oh definitely,” she confirms. “Just like I said about me being more than one genre, there’s definitely more to me as a woman as a whole. I’m into fashion, I’m into tech, I’m into cars. There’s so much more that lies ahead. I’d love to do a collaboration with Lamborghini - that would be sick.

“A pop star needs to be a chameleon,” she continues. “Your ability to switch and adapt needs to be on 10. A pop star needs to be a fashion icon. And a pop star needs to be any genre they want to be at any time.”

With so much achieved in this, the most unconventional of times, it’s undeniable that 2021 is going to be a behemoth of a year for Bree. She’s keeping tight-lipped about what’s next, although we’re sure it’s already mapped out on a vision board somewhere.

“What’s coming is that Bree Runway is going to change the game,” she says, with a glint in her eye”.

Actually, there is another 2020 interview that is worth sourcing. It seems, reading this interview from DORK that the lure of MTV and the power of music videos helped captivate Bree Runway at a young age:

“Pledging no allegiances to any genre, always expect the unexpected with Bree. She’s got big dreams and a 20/20 vision that’d have you thinking she’s been doing this for decades.

In a way, she has. Born in Hackney, Bree grew up glued to the telly, watching music videos on MTV which influenced her own artistry later on (the ‘APESHIT’ video is so Missy Elliot, it got co-signed by the legend herself). A born performer, she’d put on shows for her family as a kid, organising the whole thing herself.

“My mum used to go to work, and me and my cousin would be left at home, and we would always watch MTV. That inspired me to start hosting mini-concerts to my family members,” she says over the phone from London, where she’s performing the decidedly less glam task of combing banana from a hair mask out of her hair.

“So I’d organise the line-up, and I would decide which cousin would be singing and which cousin would dance and which cousin would rap, and then I’d tell the adults that we’re gonna come down by eight o’clock, I need everyone’s sat down and then we’d perform for them. Then that carried through to primary school and stuff. I would do performances, and my mum was almost like our own Tina Knowles because she’d make our costumes for us. And she’s still very involved in my costume stuff today.”

 When it comes to inspiration, she’s got no end of it. From actual Michelle Obama coming to Bree’s school (yes, really), watching her sing and encouraging her to pursue music (“She had a lot of time for me that day, and she gave me some very inspirational words, I have to thank her for that”), to the icons she grew up watching, she’s constantly motivated to create bold and distinctive art.

The confidence she exudes today, however, has taken a long time to build up. She mentions she was wary about the idea of becoming an artist due to how she was bullied over her dark skin as a child.

“I was never fully confident enough to go for music completely, though, so I would start and stop a lot. I was just aware of how much more you’re seen when you’re an artist, you’re more open to the public, and because of how much I was bullied growing up, I didn’t want to put myself in that position. But with age and just being exposed to more artists, like Lady Gaga, Grace Jones, because I saw pieces of myself in them, they kind of inspired me to just go for it no matter what people think about you. Some people think they’re crazy, some people think they’re amazing, but at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter, because they’re still icons.”

But learning to love herself was crucial to who she is as an artist today. Click on any of her music videos or check the replies to her tweets and you’ll find many young Black girls telling Bree what an inspiration she is and how she’s everything they wanted to see in a pop star growing up. The video for ‘Big Racks’ kicks off with statistics about racism in the workplace, and throughout she’s shown experiencing various microaggressions, and eventually covering her face in white plasters to assimilate”.

Last year was definitely a big one for Bree Runway. Even though it was strange for all artists, she did enjoy some real success and recognition. Vogue profiled her earlier in the year, where we get a sense of how things have exploded this past year:

“It’s been a rollercoaster year for everyone, but yours also took you to record highs in your career. How have you been finding it?

I split up with management at the top of the year, so I’ve been working solo, and still having to produce music videos and stuff. There’s the help of the team, of course, but I have just jumped over every single hurdle this year. The rewards have been rude. Getting 4Music “Artist of the month.” Cardi B found me; Saweetie; Doja can’t stop singing my praises. It’s really like, “What? What the hell?!” Fans always say, “You should be on like a gazillion eyes” – but it’s just not about the superficial stuff for me, it’s about the eyes that are watching you. That is so important. The impact you’re leaving on other Black girls to get more creative or think without limit.

Usually you build local buzz, then national, then international, but with you, it feels like it’s been everything at once.

You can’t make it up. I’m so happy that the biggest stars in the world recognise me and rate what I’m doing. It’s so crazy how the love changes when it crosses over to a global thing. In the UK, everyone’s quite conservative. No-one wants to look like a fan. Then your music gets passed over to people who are not afraid to make you feel like you’re the hottest thing on the planet. We really got to loosen up here, seriously.

 What’s your biggest artistic inspiration?

Everyday life. I can make music out of anything. Even that phone ringing, I could sample that. I grew up listening to Missy, Britney, Kelis, Lil Kim, Grace Jones, all the eccentric, out-there women. And men like Freddie Mercury, David Bowie. Those are my peopledem. I’m currently listening to old Latin music from like the 1970s, old Daddy Yankee, and also Kate Bush. I don’t want to sound shady but music was just more experimental before. I feel like people experimented with sounds and crossed genres. It just gives me assurance in myself that what I’m doing isn’t so strange or left. It’s been done in different ways. You just need to focus on nourishing your way. I’m from here, but I don't make Afropop or Afroswing or whatever. My genre is very much a fluid thing. You close your eyes for a minute… She’s a country singer. Oh, she’s a rock star. This is my comfort, this quirky eccentric world.

What are you working on at the moment?

I’m going to start working on the debut album. I already have a concept for it. I want it to be a true embodiment of everything I am, which is everything. I haven’t really started singing on music yet, but I can sing. That’s the rebel in me being like, just because I have a nice voice doesn’t mean I have to be a singer. But, I’m gonna sing more on the album.

What’s your biggest dream?

I have so many. One is to be a leading example of the fact that a Black girl can do anything, and Black girls are everything. I want to be a huge advocate for that. What you expect from us all — oop, there’s more, much, much more to what you expect, and what you think we should be doing. I want to be a huge example of that — global. Like, “If Bree did it, I can do it.”

You once said you were scared of fame; how are you feeling now?

I feel good. I was only afraid of being more famous because I was afraid of being seen. I thought people were gonna say the things about me they said in school. It’s definitely about silencing the inner child that has been hurt and bullied and just assuring her that we’re all good – like, it’s not the same anymore, babe. We got this. And it’s been great. People receive it. They love it. They actually love me for me. So it’s just like, what were them hoes talking about again?”.

Before closing up, there is another interview I want to source. Bree Runway is a star who is definitely primed for amazing success and a huge legacy. THE FACE chatted with her back in May. The broad and unconventional source of inspiration means her music and sound is different to anything else. She is definitely changing the shape of Pop and Rap:

“You’ve got to fake it ​‘till you make it,” she says of her evolution from a performance-shy child to a fearless pop innovator. ​“I’m a very outlandish person in how I dress.” (Think Lil’ Kim meets Lizzie McGuire, styled in Jean Paul Gaultier.) ​“I just had to own the fact that I was going to get stared at. Then I realised that a lot of the same people who were staring started looking like me or doing what I do. It’s only weird because you’re the only one doing it. When they see how much it works for you, they all want a piece of it.”

Disrupting pop’s status quo with an ever-evolving, shape-shifting sound, Runway’s lane is as wide as it is long, switching gears between genres on each and every track. Released last November, debut mixtape 2000and4Eva is a case in point. Throwback hip-hop and electro? Check. Futuristic reggae? Check. Hard-hitting punk rap? Check. Club-ready bangers? Duh.

When you look back at the biggest pop stars of the past few decades – Madonna, Britney Spears, Beyoncé – the one quality they all share is the ability to reinvent themselves. Typically, this sound and image revamp is ushered in with a new album cycle, presenting fans with a fresh ​“era” to mark the occasion. But Bree Runway is yet to release her debut album and we’ve already seen her take on more genres than most artists will cover throughout their entire careers, packaged with jaw-dropping aesthetics each time.

She’s straddled a giant, Y2K mobile phone in the music video for Little Nokia, channelled Shania Twain’s That Don’t Impress Me Much leopard print ensemble for Damn Daniel, and in What Do I Tell My Friends? twerked over her murder victim’s bloodied body. For Runway, it’s less of a reinvention and more a showcase of her versatility. We’re not witnessing her first era; we’re being invited into her universe, one that’s only set to expand as her star continues to rise.

“Going to the studio and making a fresh sound every single day? That’s as easy as breathing to me,” says Runway, matter-of-factly. ​“It would be more pressure to look at Spotify statistics, see what the most popular songs are and try to replicate them.”

A lot of her influences are a far cry from the sounds currently in the charts. She listens to Ghanaian highlife artists such as Daddy Lumba to soak up the genre’s unique percussion. She delves into the catalogues of late-Seventies/early-Eighties American funk pioneers Zapp to analyse their use of vocoders. She plays soca, calypso music that originated in Trinidad, because, well, she just likes it.

But it all started with Britney – the video for her 2001 classic I’m A Slave 4 U, to be specific. She first saw it at a sleepover with her cousin. MTV was on in the background, as young Brenda lay on the floor pretending to be asleep. ​“I turned around and saw Britney Spears’ belly out on the TV and she was doing her sweaty choreo. I had to wake my cousin up!” She spent the next day gripped to the screen, waiting to see the music video again. ​“Britney Spears did pop in such a cutting-edge way and her collaborating with Pharrell, that whole era, was just great. She was a pure example of what a pop star is.”

It’s fitting, then, that Runway’s first single of 2021, Hot Hot, upholds I’m A Slave 4 U’s raunchy, sweaty legacy. Titillating viewers as she flips her hair and washes a car in the music video, the track is a summer scorcher, reminding us all that ​“You can never ever do it like a Brenda”.

Now, Runway is preparing to reach her next career milestone: the debut album. At first, this felt like a daunting task, the pressure to ​“strike while the iron is hot” being at odds with her instinct to wait until she was in the ​“perfect place to write an album”. But the week after we speak, she’s clearly found her groove, teasing her Instagram followers with a photo in the studio.

“It’s going to be an extension of my work, but on the highest level,” she promises confidently. ​“You’re going to be getting variety. I’m going to try some things that I haven’t tried before. I’m going to be singing way more. It’s going to be sick.”

Runway’s journey isn’t only about her own success, though. There are personal goals she’d like to achieve (there’s a big one she’s about to tick off – a feature on a Lady Gaga record). But above all, she wants to inspire others.

“I would love to continue to impact the lives of Black women around the world,” she says, acknowledging the positive effect seeing someone like her on TV might have had when she was younger. ​“And I would love to birth a generation of stand-out kids, who were the underdogs growing up but have something unique in them and, because of me, they don’t feel like they have to play it down.” Bree Runway pauses briefly, searching for the right words to prophesise her own impact. ​“I want to see artists that are just on some other shit”.

Whether she is named as the BRITs’ Rising Star or not, Bree Runway is already a star and is someone in a league of her own! I will end with a playlist of the best tracks from Bree Runway to date. She is a sensational and inspiring artist who has…

A whole lot more to say.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Lola Young

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Rosie Alice Foster

Lola Young

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I wanted to put…

PHOTO CREDIT: Rosie Alice Foster

Lola Young in my Spotlight feature as, on 10th December, we will find out whether she is the BRITs Rising Star (she is up against Holly Humberstone and Bree Runway). Young is also on the shortlist for BBC’s Sound of 2022. She is an amazing young talent who is only just in her twenties. I want to come to some interviews where we can find out more about her and the amazing work she has released already. I wonder if she has plans for another album (following her 2019 debut, Intro. Before getting to any interviews, here is some background and biography about one of the U.K.’s brightest young artists:

“Fiercely independent and possessing a true artistic vision, 20-year-old Lola Young has all the potential, spirit and individuality to become the UK’s next biggest talent.

Growing up in south London and with an inherent sense of direction and personal drive, Lola immersed herself in music. “It’s been a part of my life since I had my first memory,” she says. “And I’ve been singing since I could talk. Not that I was a good singer then. I really had to learn, practice, get lessons and teach myself. Hard work was involved when it came to me learning how to sing. People might say, ‘It sounds like you were born with that voice.’ It was not the case at all.”

Hard work could be her motto. Despite her age, Lola has been living and breathing music for nearly half her life. She started writing songs aged 11, and by the time she reached 13, she had already competed in (and won) a national open mic competition and appeared on a television show that gave young teens a sense of what life working in the music industry was like. “I was still young,” she recalls, “and while I had managers and labels interested then, which was cool, I didn’t really give it a legitimate thought.”

Securing herself a place at the prestigious BRIT school (Amy Winehouse, Rex Orange County, Loyle Carner), Lola says she spent her time at the school “finding myself creatively and stylistically”. Still, something wasn’t quite right. “School is a difficult thing because it's about conforming and authority,” she says of her time spent in education. “And those are two things that I've never really loved.”

Once she graduated from the BRIT school, she began gigging non-stop around London and focusing on fine tuning her abilities as a live performer. “When people talk to me about performing live,” the 18-year-old says, “I say that I’ve always worked so hard in that area. I’ve done so many shitty open mic pub gigs where I’ve rocked up and played to three old men drinking beer and talking through my performance. But I had to do that.”

At the heart of Lola’s live set was the music she had written. While most artists might distance themselves from the songs they wrote when they were young, Lola embraces the emotional and musical journey she’s been on. One specific song, “I Learned From You”, was written five years ago when she was just 13, and is a highlight of her live set. In fact, despite its age, the track still manages to leave Lola in her feelings. Recalling one particularly emotional performance that left her tearful, Lola says: “That song was written about a close family member and after I performed it at that show, someone came to me and said that it made them think about this figure in their life. And it was like, ‘Wow! That is exactly what I wrote it about.’ They had attributed it to their own life. That blew my mind.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Laura Bailey 

Lola soon found herself being managed by industry figureheads Nick Shymansky and Nick Hugget and signed a deal with Island Records, the label that she says felt most homely. It’s all been a crash course in resilience. “And when I say resilience,” she continues, “I mean you have to be able to know what you want. And you have to know what you are. Actually, no one knows who they are,” she laughs, “but you can know what you're trying to be. I always had a rough idea of what I was trying to be.”

That vision manifests itself in the music she writes. “My music is all the different parts of me and how I work,” she explains. In this way, it defies categorisation, while every beat and melody has meaning and intention. As a lyricist, Lola draws you in to her world, creating evocative scenes with all the tenderness and sensitivity of a folk artist, while maintaining the sharpness, wit and attitude of a rapper.

This is exemplified on debut single “Six Feet Under”, a haunting, subtle but hook-laden song that feels sketched out of Lola’s very being. Co-produced by Al Shux (Kendrick Lemar, Jay Z), the song was written by Lola on the piano before being worked into an atmospheric, celestial, ambient and lightly electronic missive with an unconventional beat and Lola’s heart wrenching vocals singing about the battle to pull yourself out of depression. “It’s about that mental feeling of being stuck in a time and place while the world continues to turn,” Lola says of the song. “Life goes one, regardless of the way you feel about it.”

Elsewhere, “The Man” plays with intimate balladry and electronic minimalism, while songs like “3rd Jan” and “Blind Love” cover different sides of her boundless sonic universe. The latter especially is so tender and barefaced, Lola’s voice pulled back to a whisper, that it feels inevitable that it will become emblematic of thousands of people’s relationships, the soundtrack to love itself.

“As a songwriter I like that I can listen to an album and I can feel inspired to write a song,” Lola says of her inspirations. “But usually I’d say that I write when I’m really in touch with my feelings. I use it as my therapy.” Raised on a diet of Joni Mitchell and Prince, Lola, as a standout lyricist, says that she feels particularly inspired by artists who she considers poets first. “A lot of people say that they don’t hear Joni or these artists in my music, but they’re there. I have always been interested in words and how they fit together.”

The battling spirit that saw Lola pushing against the authoritative restraints at school applies to her approach to her career. “I think it’s interesting because people always try to box you,” she explains. “But what I always say is that you should just make the box really big. Because at the end of the day, when people say they want to box you or pigeonhole you, it means that they want to restrict you. Without sounding narcissistic, I'm not really one thing. I'm quite a few things and my music is quite a few things. And I think that’s important to remember: you're not just one thing.”

Such self-assurance is essential in the music industry but Lola admits she still feels overwhelmed when hearing how her music resonates with people. “It’s intense,” she explains. “I struggle with personal issues myself and even though it’s really overwhelming and beautiful when people come up to me and tell me these things, I will only hear the negative. I feel like a lot of musicians are like that. They’ll come off stage and they’ll focus on what went wrong.” She is learning, though: “It’s important to forgive yourself for those things.”

Exceptionally talented with an undeniable creative focus, she is a musical force. A thrilling and uncompromising live performer with an astute and unique gift for writing songs that encapsulate and explore the human condition, Lola Young can’t be boxed or categorised. And because of that she is one of the most exciting new British artists ready to be discovered”.

Before coming to interviews from this year, I want to head back to last year. Atwood Magazine spoke with Lola Young about her incredible track, Woman. It followed up a terrific E.P. in the form of Renaissance:

“British singer/songwriter Lola Young opens her most empowering release to date with a raw foreword of sorts; an author’s note introducing the subject matter at hand, establishing both the context for the art we are about to experience and why we are experiencing it. Vulnerable, heartfelt, and polished, “Woman” features Lola Young in her finest hour with a stirring ode to and embrace of womxnhood. Unapologetic and fierce, it’s a seismic emotional outpouring and a stunning expression of love and respect not just for herself, but for all the womxn in her life.

Many great songs have been named “Woman,” and few have come as close to capturing the essence of womxnhood as Lola Young’s “Woman.” Released July 27, the artist’s follow-up to her April EP Renaissance is an effortless, intimately charged upheaval in the very best of ways. The 19-year-old pours herself out in an achingly honest dedication. “‘Woman’ is a song about female empowerment,” Young shared upon the track’s release. “It’s a song about how I feel towards the patriarchy, but also an introspective piece that looks at the gender roles and how these can be broken down. This song means a lot to me because it’s something I had never previously written about and it has an honest vulnerability to it that I hope makes people feel an understanding towards us women.”

I wanted to write an ode to women because I felt it was important, where we are socially, to use my voice to empower women and their bodies in particular.

Young’s lyrics bounce between empowerment, common critiques and double-standards for womxn, and pure assertions of strength, inner and outer beauty. She sugarcoats nothing, painting a vivid portrait of her female experience in a patriarchal society. As a song, “Woman” balances this structural imbalance with a feverish dedication to overcome, persevere, and embody the artist’s womxnhood. This vision comes to life in Young’s Olivia Rose-directed music video. “I wanted to make this video because I believe women are all undeniably strong, sexy, free, brave, vulnerable, raw and powerful, and that we do not have to hide away,” Young explains. “We do not have to remain unseen, our bodies should never be sexualised or a taboo conversation, or only seen through the male gaze. We have the ability to normalise our bodies being on show, and accept them for their differences, as It’s important to remember those differences are currently often shamed. I came up with the idea of the women in the video being fully nude. The energy on set was insane, I have never felt more empowered in my life. Nipples, bums, rolls, stretch marks, cellulite, all of these things are beautiful along with the ‘perfect’ body.”

This is my personal experience of being a woman; hopefully other women will have their own take on what it means to them.

 Lola Young’s “Woman” is uncompromisingly soulful, impassioned, and utterly electrifying. Co-produced with Wolf Tone founder and producer Paul Epworth (Adele, Florence and the Machine, Rihanna), it is without a doubt the most mature offering we have yet heard from the emerging artist – a vivid immersion of intoxicating, deep grooves and heated vocals with a clear, strong vision”.

WHAT ATTRACTS YOU TO THE SUBJECTS OF BOTH FEMALE EMPOWERMENT AND STRIFE?

Lola Young: I don’t really know what attracts me to it; I guess I just feel things like most people do and because of this I want other people to feel things when listening to my music. This is quite a political song and I have always been attracted and interested in social politics so the fact that women’s bodies are definitely over sexualised is something I thought would be interesting to write about, as I haven’t heard many other songs speak about this.

YOU REPEAT THE WORD “WOMAN” AGAIN AND AGAIN, REALLY EMPHASIZING THE IDENTITY BOTH ASSOCIATED WITH AND TAKEN FROM THE WORD. WHAT DOES THAT WORD, “WOMAN,” MEAN TO YOU?

Lola Young: The word “woman” means very different things depending on how I’m feeling. However, in general I’d say the word woman means the ability to be strong whilst being emotional. The ability to be many things at once. To me it means being free whilst at some points being quite the opposite, but it also is about how we change that little by little and how a woman is of course different from a man, but nevertheless just as powerful.

YOUR SINGING IS TRULY RAW AND FEARLESS IN THIS SONG. HOW DID THE RECORDING PROCESS FOR CAPTURING SOME OF THESE INTIMATE LINES SHAKE OUT? WHAT WAS THAT PERFORMANCE LIKE, FOR YOU?

Lola Young: It was hard work recording the vocal for this song, but I really made sure I put myself in the place when singing that meant I could really feel the lyrics and the melody. It was tough and it took a while but I loved recording it over and over because it meant I could really try and capture the right emotive take”.

I am interested knowing when Lola Young got bitten by the musical bug and how it all started for her. A great interview with The Forty-Five from earlier in the year sees them ask her that, in addition to (among other subjects) when she started working on her stunning voice; also what the future holds for her:

“You got started in music incredibly young. Do you remember the first song you ever wrote?

Yeah, I was around 11 when I wrote my first song and it probably wasn’t any good. I can remember writing one, a Christmas song on the piano, and it was terrible! I just remember something about Santa and all this rubbish. It wasn’t great but it was the start of my development. I have material from when I was 13/14 that I still use today. Women mature a lot quicker, so I don’t think I’ve changed that much between 13, 14, and 20. Obviously, I’ve changed, but in terms of my songwriting style and everything, I don’t think that’s changed too much. There’s a song called ‘I Learned From You’, which is coming out in the near future and I wrote that when I was very young. I just wanted to be a songwriter at first.

When did you start to work on your voice?

Some artists, they’re born with an incredible voice. A lot of the best are gospel singers who go and sing in Church growing up. They just have it in them and for me, I couldn’t really do that. I had to go to vocal coaching and singing lessons to train my voice to ensure that it wasn’t weak.

I’m quite content with the way things are going but I did have a cyst on my vocal cords chopped off last year. It was horrible. My voice is much deeper and a bit breathier now and I couldn’t sigh high at all. I went to my GP and they said: “You either live with this and it’s fine. It won’t do any harm, but you live with it. Or we have to do surgery.” And I was like, “I’m doing surgery.”

After surgery, I had three days of no talking. I had to write everything down on a piece of paper. Obviously, they just didn’t like me talking – rude, right? So then after that, it was honestly pretty traumatic. The whole process of recovery, which is really hard because it’s not only that you need to relearn how to sing. It’s that you need to relearn how to talk.

Finally, what can we look forward to seeing from you in the future? Is there anything that you can tease?

So I’ve got a project coming out, which I’m very, very excited about. I’m not gonna give away too much, but it’s an EP called ‘After Midnight’ that’s very raw and not really like anything that I’ve done before. If I’m going to be honest, all the music I’ve made so far I’m happy and content with, but I also do feel like there’s more to me. Without sounding like Kanye! But I do think there’s more to me and I’m just excited for the next few projects. One day, I’d love to drop a trap album honestly, like straight trap songs, or some pure folk. So we’ll see!”.

NOTION spoke to Lola Young back in August about her new E.P., After Midnight. They asked whether, having released her debut as a teenager, the music industry treated her differently (compared with how they would deal with a slightly older artist):

“Firstly, mental health is such an important topic of conversation, so how are you doin

I’m alright you know; I think I’m good. I have a mental health condition, so I know and understand the struggle of someone who goes through it day-to-day. Luckily mine is very much sporadic, my episodes kind of come at different points in my life. So, right now I think I’m good, I mean it is what it is. I also just want to say thank you for asking this question because I think it is so important for it to become normality to ask people how they actually are. I’m someone who usually does ask that question, I think it’s really important to check up on the people around you, or even those that aren’t. I met a girl recently on a video that I was at, and I could tell that they seemed quite down, so you’ve always got to check. Sometimes you can sense it just by a person’s energy.

What inspired you to become an artist? Had you always known you wanted to do music?

Yeah, I’ve always known I wanted to do music since I was very young and it was just one of those things where there was never another option for me. It was only this. I was never really good at anything else when I was at school. Like I was good at school, but I wasn’t amazing, you know? And I feel like there are two types of people in this world, there are the people that are sick at school and academics and then there are the people that just aren’t very good. And with the education system, there seems to be this thing where there’s just no middle ground. I mean there are people who get B’s and C’s, but they just classify that as being ‘not good’. There are a lot of creative people in this world, and I think a lot of them have a tendency to be a bit contained or reserved when this shouldn’t be the case.

I read that you released your debut album at only age 18; have you felt people treat you differently in the industry due to your age [Lola is now 20]?

Yes and no. Growing up I was always – I don’t want to say mature, because I definitely haven’t always been mature, haha. But in the sense of that, I’m able to just talk to people and to communicate what I want. So, I don’t feel like that’s ever really been an issue because I always know what I want in regard to my music. Also, that first release, I see it more as just a little project that I dropped, and yeah, I guess you could call it an album, but it was more just me experimenting. Basically, I feel like people will only treat you differently if you feel differently yourself. Now that’s obviously not the same in every scenario, but I feel like people will only treat you differently if you allow them to.

Did the Covid-19 lockdown affect you as an artist or was it a blessing in disguise?

I’d say a blessing in disguise in some sense where I could really focus on myself and my music. But also, the complete opposite at times. It was very hard for a lot of people, especially us creatives because it messed up a lot of things. It messed up a lot of my plans and other artists’ plans. So definitely a blessing and a curse at the same time for sure.

How do you go about setting yourself goals? Do you tend to set massive ones or like month by month?

I think I try to set small ones but sometimes they just end up really big and too far for me to reach. I think it’s important to set yourself small goals. Even just when we spoke about mental health, setting small goals like I’m going to wake at this time tomorrow and make my bed. In reality, that is such a small goal but if you do it then it can help set off a chain of events. So yeah, in terms of my music I definitely try to set up a group of smaller goals rather than a few big ones”.

Not only is Lola Young the singer behind this year’s John Lewis advert. She could also be named as the BRITs’ rising star. Even if she is not, the fact that she has been nominated demonstrates how important and promising a talent she is! An artist with a long and successful career ahead of her, go and follow her and check out the music. London-based Lola Young is a remarkable songwriter and singer possessed of…

SUCH enormous promise.

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Follow Lola Young

FEATURE: Spotlight: Cassandra Jenkins

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Cassandra Jenkins

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ON this occasion…

I am spotlighting an artist I only turned onto relatively recently. The amazing Cassandra Jenkins is someone who has released one of the best albums of the year with An Overview on Phenomenal Nature. Her second studio album, it is a sublime Alternative Folk album that is dreamy and impressionistic. I am going to come to a couple of reviews for the album in a bit. Before that, it is worth sourcing a couple of interviews with the Brooklyn-born artist. In a detailed and brilliant interview with Pitchfork, we discover more about Jenkins’ path into music. She also talks about what it was like working with the late musician David Berman:

“As we lay in the snow, arms outstretched as if we got tired in the middle of making snow angels, Jenkins tells me about the author and filmmaker Miranda July’s idea of “everyday acting,” how you can make scenes out of ordinary moments if the people around you are willing to “go there” with you. For Jenkins, 36, this means adopting a persona when talking to a stranger in the grocery store, sporting binoculars around birders to signal that she’s one of them—or plopping in the snow in the middle of a crowded park. She gets a lot of joy from these performances because they allow her to step outside herself and dissolve into another space with a stranger.

The idea of decentering the self comes up again and again as a guiding principle behind Jenkins’ new psych-folk album, An Overview on Phenomenal Nature. On it, she acts as an ethnographer archiving quotidian sounds and conversations as much as a songwriter telling her own story. Album closer “The Ramble” transforms birdsong and footsteps recorded in the woodsy park sanctuary into a droning meditation. “Hailey” is a straightforward document of a friend’s Instagram post made tender by Jenkins’ cautious vocal delivery and the finger-plucked guitar and banjo notes. And centerpiece “Hard Drive” is a spoken word mantra that references people Jenkins interacted with in her day-to-day life: a security guard, bookkeeper, psychic, and driving instructor. Their idiosyncrasies, like the security guard’s feminism and the psychic’s reassurance, come together to form one consciousness—all the little pieces of herself that Jenkins finds in others.

Jenkins’ relationship with music has always been inextricably linked to her family. Her parents played cruise ships as part of a lounge act in the 1980s before raising Jenkins in an apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. When Jenkins was a child, her dad bought a bus so their family band could drive around the country and perform at obscure folk festivals together. Up until the pandemic hit last year, her family regularly hosted touring musicians and held concerts in that same Manhattan home. It was at these shows that Jenkins played some of the songs on her new album for the first time.

After graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2006, she bounced between day jobs and said yes to playing in every group she could including, but by no means limited to, a honky tonk bar band, a surf band, an emo band, and a synth-pop band. She went on her first tour in 2010 with an all-female bluegrass outfit called Uncle Earl and has since played with indie rock vets like Craig Finn and Eleanor Friedberger. “She has this calmness about her where you notice immediately that she’s really listening to you,” Friedberger says of Jenkins. “A lot of times in New York when you meet other musicians they’re always thinking of the next thing to say to impress you, but she’s just not like that at all.”

In the summer of 2019, Jenkins was preparing for a three-month tour as part of celebrated songwriter David Berman’s new band, Purple Mountains. But right before the trek was set to start, Berman took his own life. “We weren’t close friends, and I only knew him for four days, but I still had this incredibly unique experience of him,” Jenkins says, adding that she was profoundly impacted by his death. Though she was initially nervous to write about Berman, his spirit permeates Phenomenal Nature. On “Ambiguous Norway,” his memory surrounds her like fog, and on “New Bikini” she ruminates on the advice her friends gave her—“Baby, go jump in the ocean”—to cope with the loss.

Berman’s songs were full of darkness and vulnerability, lit up by wry observations about suburban kids, airport bars, and country clubs. He and Jenkins share a propensity to watch the world and insist on wonder as a guiding principle. Despite the loneliness and disappointment in their work, there’s a hopeful understanding that, as Berman sang on his 1998 song “People,” “Moments can be monuments to you/If your life is interesting and true.”

Soon after Berman died, Jenkins realized she had forgotten to cancel a flight to Norway that she had planned before agreeing to go on tour. When she noticed it was set to depart at the exact time her first Purple Mountains show was meant to start, she took it as a sign and went on the trip. While there, she met a Danish chef who told her that in Norway, clouds serve as proxies for mountains. The mountain reference, coupled with the fact that Berman’s middle name was Cloud, felt like an eerie coincidence, one that made her question the nature of existence itself. “I felt like all the borders of my experiences were just collapsing—it was this wink, and I was like, ‘Are you seeing this?’” she says, gesturing to a higher power above her head. “I was seeing connections like that everywhere in this really psychedelic way.”

Jenkins describes having “traveller eyes” after her trip to Norway. She obsessively recorded people and places for months, not knowing what she would do with the audio. She had written a whole set of songs, but found that they no longer felt resonant after a period of such meaningful change. She struggled the few times she tried to play them, recounting with a laugh one particularly jarring instance when she was opening for her friend Lola Kirke, the musician and actress known for role in Noah Baumbach’s Mistress America. “I ended up doing this workout routine and telling jokes about my dad,” Jenkins recalls. “At one point I remember getting off the stage and doing a conga line with the audience. Lola was in the line behind me and she asked, ‘What are you doing?’ I was like, ‘I’m having a crisis!’”

In October 2019, she booked time in the studio with producer, multi-instrumentalist, and songwriter Josh Kaufman, whose resume includes work with the Hold Steady and the National, as well as with Taylor Swift on her two recent folk-leaning albums. Jenkins showed up with voice memos, iPhone notes, and lyrics over the course of a week, and the pair pieced together six of the album’s seven tracks. “She ended up with something totally different than she had gone in looking for,” Kaufman says. “It takes a certain kind of person to not feel the obligation of their previous impulse.” Compared to the more structured and academic approach she took to making her debut album, 2017’s Play Till You Win, the process of putting Phenomenal Nature together was purposefully loose. She wanted to write songs with two or three chords that she could easily play with strangers or her family members.

Your album is named after an exhibition of Indian visual artist Mrinalini Mukherjee’s fantastical sculptures. How did her work influence the music?

In many ways the security guard that I talked to at the exhibition is my mascot of the record. I was struck by the fact that this woman had stopped me and said, “Let me give you an overview of this thing” when in fact it was a completely subjective monologue. I loved the gall of that lady to do that. I think a lot of times when someone is offering an overview of something, it is infused with their personality. Or when someone’s asking you a question, they’re revealing something about themselves.

You held day jobs digitally restoring gems at the Natural History Museum, working at a farmer’s market, and as a photographer. How have all these different gigs shaped how you approach being a musician?

I’ve never been a careerist, especially in music. It’s always been something I live and breathe with my family. Maybe it’s also a combination of a fear of failure, or not wanting to commit myself fully because I don’t want to ruin the thing that I enjoy most in life. It’s part of my mental health practice to make sure I’m always learning about other things and not getting absorbed in the narcissistic act of putting out my own music. This record is a great example. I really didn’t think anyone was gonna hear it. But I loved making it, and it really carried me through a difficult period in my life. Music hasn’t done that for me before in this way.

What was it like playing with David Berman?

My experience of him was really informed by the days in the wake of his passing, when I met so many people that played or corresponded with him. People have so many stories of him. I was so devastated that I didn’t get to know him better.

It’s intimidating to write about someone who is such a legend to so many people. When I joined [Purple Mountains] I was nervous because I was like, “Why am I here? There are so many people that can play this guitar part, why me?” But then, when I was standing next to him, I immediately was like, “Oh I get it, I know why I’m here.” He was so funny and open, and definitely struggling. I just was so excited to love this person. I knew that immediately. I could feel how deeply he felt the songs. He had a hard time getting through the [Silver Jews] song “The Wild Kindness,” but by the time we were done rehearsing, he had gotten through it without crying.

“The Ramble” is wordless and meditative, and a slightly different tone than the rest of the album. Why did you want to end the record with that song?

It was the last song to come into place. I wrote it in May 2020, a few months after the rest of the record, because I was spending a lot of time there. I actually wrote a guitar part and an audio guide to “The Ramble” but ended up taking out both because it felt too much like a directive. I wanted it to be a walk through the park with me but I wasn’t telling you where to go. You can just choose your own adventure.

When I wrote the song, I was feeling very mournful but also watching nature creep up everywhere. I wanted it to have that energy of the dandelion that pops up between the cracks of the sidewalk. That quality of moving forward. Through a lot of tragedy, nature has its way”.

I am eager to come to the way some critics assessed An Overview on Phenomenal Nature. I have listened to Jenkins’ debut album, Play Till You Win. Her follow-up is on another level. It is definitely one of the most beautiful records of 2021. Although it may not appear high in a lot of critics’ end-of-year polls, it is an album from a magnificent songwriter. In this interview with Under the Radar Mag, we find how An Overview on Phenomenal Nature deals quite openly and starkly with grief and loss:

“Cassandra Jenkins speaks about her latest album, An Overview on Phenomenal Nature, while packing up her car in Upstate New York. After our conversation, she will drive back to the city to get her first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. On the album’s masterful track “Hard Drive,” listeners sit in the backseat of a car while Jenkins receives driving lessons from her instructor Darryl: “Speeding up the west side, changing lanes, he reminds me to leave room for grace,” Jenkins softly says in the track.

The making of An Overview on Phenomenal Nature, not unlike learning to drive, was an exercise in letting go and vulnerability. “If you ask Darryl, driving is basically relevant to everything. That’s our spoken metaphor,” Jenkins says. The album was recorded in six days with multi-instrumentalist and producer Josh Kaufman (of Bonny Light Horseman and Muzz) at his studio. She entered the studio with some words, ideas, and loose melodies with the goal of having rough demos by the end of her stay. Instead, Jenkins says that an album steadily started to shape like “molding things out of clay.”

“My last two releases [2017’s Play Till You Win and 2013’s EP] were songs that were finished and arranged and I had lots of goals for how they would sound,” Jenkins explains. “This record was the complete opposite. I had such a hectic schedule at the time and Josh is always busy, so the time limitation really forced me to get out of my head and not overthink things. A little bit would come along and then I’d look back at a song that night and I’d start to see it forming or we’d start to see it forming in the studio.”

For the majority of An Overview on Phenomenal Nature, its ambient and folk instrumentation drifts gently, which allows Jenkins’ lyrics to be the primary focus. Across the album, she sings about grief and falling apart. In 2019, Jenkins was preparing to go on tour with David Berman’s project Purple Mountains when Berman took his own life. “I have to tell you, I was really going through a crisis and capturing that on tape,” Jenkins admits. “That’s what I feel like this record is.”

But there are also moments of profound peace and songs that feel suffused by the light of her friendships. On “New Bikini,” Jenkins’ friends, and mother, encourage her to tap into water’s restorative powers. The sentiment echoes what Bonnie Tsui writes in her book Why We Swim: “We dare to jump so we can see something new. And sometimes we do it to recover a sense of what we once had.”

“I got cracked open by some of the hard stuff that I’ve experienced over the last few years,” Jenkins says. “It left no room for the gymnastics that we can do in our minds to not admit to certain behaviors that we aren’t proud of or to quiet the voices that really need to be heard because we don’t want to face them”.

The reviews for An Overview on Phenomenal Nature have been hugely positive. I feel that more people need to listen to Cassandra Jenkins’ latest album. This is what AllMusic noted about it in their review:  

“Five years after her debut album, Cassandra Jenkins returns with Overview on Phenomenal Nature, a stunning work of impressionistic connections, contradictions, and observations all stitched together into a web of graceful dream folk. A native New Yorker with years of collaboration under her belt, Jenkins grew up within the East Coast folk community, singing and playing guitar in her family's string band before beginning a solo career in the mid-2010s. Along the way, she also cut her teeth as a session player, touring with Eleanor Friedberger, Lola Kirke, and Craig Finn. She also joined David Berman's Purple Mountains project and began rehearsing with them for a tour that was ultimately canceled after the singer's tragic death in 2019. Themes of loss and healing reverberate throughout the album, especially on the hushed "Ambiguous Norway" and the gorgeous standout "New Bikini," a pair of tracks in which Berman plays a significant role. The latter song's gentle sway and nods to the restorative power of water make it feel more palliative than mournful, a trait that could be applied to the album as a whole. From the outset, Jenkins conveys a soothing sense of intimacy that draws listeners into her small odysseys where museum guards wax philosophical on humanity's connection to nature ("Hard Drive") and the letting go can be found in the arms of a stranger ("Michelangelo"). Yet in spite of its intimacy, there's an expansive, wide-open quality to producer Josh Kaufman's arrangements which ripple with ambient synths, strings, and some stellar sax and flute work from ubiquitous local hero Stuart Bogie. With her tranquil voice and astute poetic sense, Jenkins flirts with melancholy, joy, sorrow, and wonder in a way that is both cerebral and touching. Her songwriting talent and willingness to experiment was already evident on 2017's Play 'til You Win, but the perfect balance of exploration and poignancy on Overview make it a significant step forward for her”.

To end up, there is another review that I want to mention. Pitchfork made some interesting observations when they sat down with An Overview on Phenomenal Nature:

“With the exception of “Michaelangelo,” a thematic overture that summons the understated wisdom of Aimee Mann, Jenkins composed the entire album in Kaufman’s studio over the span of a week. Plainspoken and intuitive, her writing zooms into a specific period in her life. In summer 2019, she was prepared to join David Berman on his comeback tour as Purple Mountains when, just before opening night, she received news that he had died by suicide. Throughout these songs, she guides us through the immediate aftermath—grief, helplessness, canceled flights—along with a more imagistic fog of loneliness and confusion.

While Jenkins’ early work offered a cozy spin on glammy Americana, here she and Kaufman carve a new atmosphere that feels particularly suited to this material. “Empty space is my escape,” she sings in “Crosshairs,” and her collaborators take these words as a kind of prescription, letting their melodies and rhythm materialize around her like constellations. Often, the cadence of her storytelling informs the sound of the band: Her search for enlightenment amid the depressive limbo of “New Bikini” casts them as a kind of ambient lounge act, while the solitary ghost story of “Ambiguous Norway” emits a heavenly campfire glow, like the ballads from Bon Iver rendered as sci-fi.

Jenkins’ goal as a writer is to remain present, receptive to the poetry of daily life. But anyone who has dabbled in meditation knows the other side of that pursuit: the anger of feeling stuck in your own head, the frustration at your own frustration, the fear that maybe you’ve veered too far off course to ever get centered again. Despite the lapping calm of “New Bikini,” with its luxurious saxophone accompaniment from Stuart Bogie, there is a storm brewing below the surface. In each chorus, Jenkins recalls a friend’s advice—“Baby, go get in the ocean/The water, it cures everything”—and reconsiders it with optimism, skepticism, or sarcasm. Over the course of the song, you can hear her outlook dissolve from peaceful, cosmic nothingness into the more void-like, everyday kind.

Despite the trauma in her subject matter, Jenkins’ writing summons a graceful, almost aspirational quality of lightness. She draws on the language of self-help—the mind-body connection, chakras, carving yourself from marble—but she also leaves room for pain to exist unresolved, unprocessed. She fills her music with community and friends, but she also understands that no one has it all figured out—least of all the people who claim to. This is why a song like “Crosshairs,” with its heartsick plea to “fall apart in the arms of someone entirely strange to me,” does not come across like rock bottom desperation: From Jenkins, this is a prayer, her belief that shared vulnerability can lead to its own kind of strength.

The album’s gravitational center, and her peak as a songwriter, is “Hard Drive.” Over a steady, slow-building arrangement, Jenkins recites each verse in her speaking voice, undistracted, letting us into four distinct scenes: an art exhibit, a bookshop, a driving lesson, and a friend’s birthday party. Here, Jenkins meets a psychic who offers a few words of hope and guides her through a breathing exercise. Somewhere along the way in Jenkins’ retelling, a transformation takes place. Singing in the second person, she becomes the psychic. The drums cycle uphill and the band crescendos toward a psychedelic sunrise of pedal steel and ringing, open, major chords: “We’re gonna put your heart back together,” she promises. “Are you ready?” Her voice glimmers with the confidence of someone who already knows the answer”.

Cassandra Jenkins is an artist that everyone should follow. Her songwriting digs deep and she has this voice and emotional pull that takes you directly into her music. I am going to follow her career and what comes next. It will be really interesting to see what arrives from Cassandras Jenkins…

IN 2022.

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Follow Cassandra Jenkins

FEATURE: A Perennial Favourite: The Legacy and Wonder of Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You

FEATURE:

 

 

A Perennial Favourite

 The Legacy and Wonder of Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You

___________

AT this time of year…

the Christmas classics are being played. There are new Christmas tracks every year but, to me, they are nothing compared to the greats. From the start of December (or earlier) shops and cafes are blasting out some of our absolute favourites. One of my all-time favourite Christmas tunes is Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You. She co-wrote and co-produced it with Walter Afanasieff for her fourth studio album and first holiday album, Merry Christmas (1994). The song was released as the lead single from the album on 29th October, 1994. It has Christmas ingredients like bells, a choral feel, an uplifting sound and positive message. Whereas other Christmas songs are about materialism or being with family, Carey just wants to be with a special someone. Favouring this man above lots of presents and the excesses of the season, it is a song that has a singalong chorus and a powerhouse vocal from Carey. I am going to come to an article about All I Want for Christmas Is You soon. Prior to that, there are some articles that point to its critical reception and its record sales. This Wikipedia article collates the feedback and reviews of, to me, the best Christmas track of the 1990s:

“All I Want for Christmas Is You" received critical acclaim. Roch Parisien from AllMusic called the song "a year-long banger", complimenting its instrumentation and melody. Steve Morse, editor of The Boston Globe, wrote that Carey sang with a lot of soul. In his review for Carey's Merry Christmas II You, Thomas Connor from the Chicago Sun-Times called the song "a simple, well-crafted chestnut and one of the last great additions to the Christmas pop canon".

Shona Craven of Scotland's The Herald, said, "[it's] a song of optimism and joy that maybe, just maybe, hints at the real meaning of Christmas." Additionally, she felt the main reason it was so successful is the subject "you" in the lyrics, explaining, "Perhaps what makes the song such a huge hit is the fact that it's for absolutely everyone." Craven opened her review with a bold statement: "Bing Crosby may well be turning in his grave, but no child of the 1980s will be surprised to see Mariah Carey's sublime All I Want For Christmas Is You bounding up the charts after being named the nation's top festive song." While reviewing the 2009 remix version, Becky Bain from Idolator called the song a "timeless classic" and wrote, "We love the original song to pieces—we blast it while decorating our Christmas tree and lighting our Menorah."

Kyle Anderson from MTV labeled the track "a majestic anthem full of chimes, sleigh bells, doo-wop flourishes, sweeping strings and one of the most dynamic and clean vocal performances of Carey's career". Music & Media commented, "Phil Spector's Christmas album has been the main inspiration for this carol in a "Darlene Love against the wall of sound" tradition." Music Week wrote, "Mariah meets Phil Spector, some chimes and the inevitable sleigh-bells; this is everything you would expect from a Mariah Carey record." In a 2006 retrospective look at Carey's career, Sasha Frere-Jones of The New Yorker said, the "charming" song was one of Carey's biggest accomplishments, calling it "one of the few worthy modern additions to the holiday canon". Dan Hancox, editor of The National, quoted and agreed with Jones' statement, calling the song "perfection". According to Barry Schwartz from Stylus Magazine, "to say this song is an instant classic somehow doesn't capture its amazingicity; it's a modern standard: joyous, exhilarating, loud, with even a hint of longing." Schwartz praised the song's lyrics as well, describing them as "beautifully phrased," and calling Carey's voice "gorgeous" and "sincere”.

All I Want for Christmas Is You ranks alongside the best songs for this time of year. Many will argue as to whether it is the very best, but so many people buy it and demand it be played because it is so effusive, catchy and warm. There is a bit of treacle, though the power of Mariah Carey’s voice and conviction, combined with Christmas sounds and images, makes it a gem that has been embraced by multiple generations. It is not a Christmas song that peaked in the ‘90s and then declined. If anything. All I Want for Christmas Is You has grown even bigger and more influential. On 4th December, this article spotlighted a unique honour for a holiday song:

“Mariah Carey’s Christmas anthem, “All I Want for Christmas Is You” became the first and only holiday single to take home the Recording Industry Association of America’s (RIAA) Diamond Award in recognition of 10 million sales and streaming units in the United States.

“The continued love for my song never ceases to amaze me and fill my heart with a multitude of emotions,” Carey said. “It blows my mind that ‘All I Want for Christmas is You’ has endured different eras of the music industry. The RIAA DIAMOND award?! Wowww! I’m so fortunate to have the greatest fans on Earth, my Lambily, who continue to support my legacy. I love you.”

As of Friday, the song also returned to Billboard Hot 100 and clinched the #1 Spot on Billboard’s Greatest of All Time Holiday 100 Songs”.

Even if you are not a fan of Mariah Carey and her studio albums, it is hard to resist the festive classic that is All I Want for Christmas Is You. I am a fan of Carey and I feel this song stands alongside her very best. In 2021, All I Want for Christmas Is You is still celebrated and beloved. It is a song that will never go out of fashion or not be on Christmas wish lists. In 2019, TIME penned a piece about the continuing legacy and importance of the 1994 diamond:

“The temperatures are dipping and twinkling lights are being hung, but nothing confirms that the holiday season is in full swing as cogently as Mariah Carey’s now-iconic holiday classic, “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”

The festive track, a veritable pop masterpiece written and performed by Carey (with a co-writing assist from her longtime collaborator at the time, Walter Afanasieff) has consistently dominated not only the holiday music charts, but the zeitgeist since it made its joyous debut in 1994. Perhaps even more impressive is the Christmas song’s ability to be beloved throughout this time period, somehow capable of charming listeners in spite of its ubiquity every holiday season. Now, 25 years and endless screenings of Love, Actually later, the song has become on of the ultimate modern Christmas anthems, unrivaled by any of its contemporary peers and more than able to hold its own with longtime favorites of the holiday canon.

 The popularity of “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is noteworthy, not merely in its staying power (although a quarter of a century at the forefront of the holiday genre is a flex, if there ever was one) or its momentum in gaining ubiquity year after year, but in its ability to command the category over a period in which her industry and the culture has evolved significantly. The Internet, streaming services and multiple waves of new artists have gained considerable traction in the past three decades, but when it comes to the holiday song, Carey and “All I Want for Christmas Is You” have reigned triumphant, over (not in spite of) multiple platforms.

Case in point? According to a 2016 Nielsen report, “All I Want for Christmas” was the only song to make the top 5 holiday songs for radio airplay, streaming services and song purchases, helping to demonstrate the track’s appeal across generations and platforms. Last year, Nielsen found that total digital streaming of audio and video for the song clocked in at just under 229 million, while digital sales of the song were 100k and radio airplay checked in at over 42,000. The multi-platinum song consistently tops the Billboard Holiday Hot 100 and made history in early 2019 when it hit #3 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the first holiday song in 60 years to break the top 5 and the second-ever holiday song to chart that high.

There are multiple factors to the song’s popularity, the most obvious of which are the powerhouse vocals of the beloved elusive chanteuse. But the savvy songwriting and themes of the song have played an integral role in the success of the track as well. The track and the album it appeared on, Merry Christmas, were inspired by the upbeat sounds of Phil Spector, who made the hit 1963 Christmas album, A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector.

In an interview with Business Insider in 2013, co-writer Afanasieff noted that he was fairly surprised that the track was as commercially successful as it was because it didn’t adhere to conventional holiday music or the sounds of the time.

“My first reaction was, ‘That sounds like someone doing voice scales,’” Afanasieff said. “Are you sure that’s what you want?”

As is her wont, Carey knew exactly what she wanted and kept the melody true to her vision, resulting in a song that Afanasieff says has stayed on top due to precisely that — its uptempo sound, a near rarity in the offerings of American Christmas songs. That’s not to say that the song is simple in any way, however.

“The melody of ‘All I Want For Christmas’ is astoundingly complicated considering how simple it seems,” songwriter and And the Writer Is… podcast host Ross Golan tells TIME. “The brain latches on songs after the listener invests significant time to learn them. That song in particular is now neurologically built into the zeitgeist.”

This, of course, attests to Carey’s skills as a songwriter, a factor that’s often overshadowed by her outstanding talent and larger-than-life persona. Lest listeners forget while listening to her hit the whistle register, Carey wrote 17 of her 18 #1 hits, a feat that astounds on multiple levels.

“This song is a testament to something that Mariah Carey is still undervalued for: Her songwriting,” beauty writer and self-professed lifelong Lamb (for the uninitiated, Lambs or the “Lambily” are the devoted fans of Carey) Tynan Sinks tells TIME. “Mariah Carey wrote this song, dude. Isn’t that crazy? It’s such a classic that people think it’s a cover of something else, but it’s a Mariah Carey original, baby. She just sat down one day and literally invented Christmas.”

In 2015, Slate reported that the song’s seemingly magic ability to put you in a festive holiday mood is actually because of its dulcet harmony, which contains at least 13 distinct chords, including a specific minor subdominant chord, which they dub “the most Christmassy chord of all” and is found in songs like Irving Berlin’s classic “White Christmas.”

In a deep dive into the song’s structure at Quartz, musicologist and Switched on Pop podcast host Nate Sloan also revealed that since Carey was inspired by old school holiday music, she used an AABA song structure that was popular in the 1940s and 1950s and that was used for songs like “Frosty the Snowman” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” which can do plenty for holiday nostalgia for the good ‘ol days.

Unlike “Rudolph” and “Frosty,” however, Carey’s track provides a more adult take on a Christmas song, which also proved to be a boon. By eschewing children-centric holiday iconography like Santa and Rudolph for Carey’s trademark musical subject, love and romance, she reached a whole new — and very large — demographic with a theme that everyone could identify with.

“It’s not a religious song,” Andrew Mall, assistant professor of music at Northeastern Univeristy tells TIME. “She talks about Christmas, but no religious beliefs. It’s actually a love song. Anyone can inhabit those lyrics; the lover is not named, the lover is not gendered, so anyone can put themselves in that position as needing someone to love at the holidays. It’s a secular love song and not a religious Christmas carol.” Mall also attributes the song’s popularity to nostalgia of another kind: for the ’90s as a whole, especially the music of the time.

Not only is All I Want for Christmas Is You one of the best Christmas/holiday songs ever. I think it is a song that sits alongside the best in any genre. Its positivity and sense of joy is never cloying or old-fashioned. Other Christmas songs are played less than when they were released, though Mariah Carey’s seems to get more airplay each year! It is testament to a song that is instantly recognisable and as must-listen at this time of year. All I Want for Christmas Is You is a song that we will be enjoyed…

FOR decades to come.

FEATURE: No One Compares 2 U: The Magnificent Sinéad O'Connor at Fifty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

No One Compares 2 U

PHOTO CREDIT: Terry O'Neill/Hulton/Getty

 The Magnificent Sinéad O'Connor at Fifty-Five

___________

ON 8th December…

the magnificent Sinéad O'Connor (Shuhada Sadaqat) turns fifty-five. As she is such an important artist, I wanted to put a playlist together celebrating an icon. I will get to that soon. Before doing so, it is worth learning more about O’Connor and her career. This AllMusic biography tells us more about a remarkable artist:

“Sinéad O'Connor ranked among the most distinctive and controversial pop music stars of the alternative era, the first and in many ways, the most influential of the numerous female performers whose music dominated airwaves throughout the last decade of the 20th century. Brash and outspoken -- her shaved head, angry visage, and shapeless wardrobe a direct challenge to popular culture's long-prevailing notions of femininity and sexuality -- O'Connor irrevocably altered the image of women in rock. Railing against long-standing stereotypes simply by asserting herself not as a sex object but as a serious artist, she kick-started a revolt that led the way for performers ranging from Liz Phair to Courtney Love to Alanis Morissette.

O'Connor was born in Dublin, Ireland, on December 8, 1966. Her childhood was often traumatic: her parents divorced when she was eight, and she later claimed that her mother, who was killed in a 1985 automobile accident, frequently abused her. After being expelled from Catholic school, O'Connor was arrested for shoplifting and was shuttled off to a reformatory; at the age of 15, while singing a cover of Barbra Streisand's "Evergreen" at a wedding, she was spotted by Paul Byrne, the drummer for the Irish band In Tua Nua (best known as protégés of U2). After co-writing the first In Tua Nua single, "Take My Hand," O'Connor left boarding school in order to focus on a career in music, and began performing in area coffeehouses. She later studied voice and piano at the Dublin College of Music, and supported herself delivering singing telegrams.

Upon signing a contract with Ensign Records in 1985, O'Connor relocated to London; the following year, she made her recorded debut on the soundtrack to the film Captive, appearing with U2 guitarist the Edge. After scrapping the initial tapes for her debut LP on the grounds that the production was too Celtic, she took the producer's seat herself and began re-recording the album, dubbed The Lion and the Cobra in reference to Psalm 91. The result was one of the most acclaimed debut records of 1987, with a pair of alternative radio hits in the singles "Mandinka" and "Troy." Almost from the outset of her career, however, O'Connor was a controversial media figure. In interviews following the LP's release, she defended the actions of the IRA, resulting in widespread criticism from many corners, and even burned bridges by attacking longtime supporters U2, whose music she declared "bombastic."

Nonetheless, O'Connor remained a cult figure prior to the release of 1990's chart-topping I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, a harrowing masterpiece sparked by the recent dissolution of her marriage to drummer John Reynolds. Boosted by the single and video "Nothing Compares 2 U," originally penned by Prince, the album established her as a major star, but again controversy followed as tabloids took aim at her romance with Black singer Hugh Harris while continuing to attack her outspoken politics. On American shores, O'Connor also became the target of derision for refusing to perform in New Jersey if "The Star Spangled Banner" was played prior to her appearance, a move that brought public criticism from no less than Frank Sinatra, who threatened to "kick her ass." She also made headlines for pulling out of an appearance on the NBC program Saturday Night Live in response to the misogynist persona of guest host Andrew Dice Clay, and even withdrew her name from competition in the annual Grammy Awards despite four nominations.

O'Connor also continued to confound expectations with her third album, 1992's Am I Not Your Girl?, a collection of pop standards and torch songs that failed to live up to either the commercial or critical success of I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got. However, any discussion of the record's creative merits quickly became moot in the wake of her most controversial and damaging action yet: after finally appearing on Saturday Night Live, O'Connor ended her performance by ripping up a photo of Pope John Paul II, resulting in a wave of condemnation unlike any she'd previously encountered. Two weeks after the SNL performance, she appeared at a Bob Dylan tribute concert at New York's Madison Square Garden, and was promptly booed off the stage.

By then a virtual pariah, O'Connor's retirement from the music business was subsequently reported, although it was later claimed that she had merely returned to Dublin with the intent of studying opera. She kept a low profile for the next several years, starring as Ophelia in a theatrical production of Hamlet and later touring with Peter Gabriel's WOMAD festival. She also reportedly suffered a nervous breakdown and even made a half-hearted attempt at suicide. In 1994, however, O'Connor returned to pop music with the LP Universal Mother, which, despite good reviews, failed to relaunch her to superstar status. The following year, she announced that she would no longer speak to the press. The Gospel Oak EP appeared in 1997, and in mid-2000 O'Connor issued Faith and Courage, her first full-length effort in six years. Sean-Nós Nua followed two years later, and was widely hailed for its return to the Irish folk tradition as its inspiration.

O'Connor used the press exposure from the album to further assert her pending retirement from music. In September 2003, the two-disc She Who Dwells... appeared through Vanguard. It collected rare and previously unreleased studio tracks, as well as live material culled from a late-2002 date in Dublin. The album was positioned as O'Connor's swan song, though official word was not forthcoming. Collaborations followed in 2005, a compilation of appearances on other artists' records throughout her long career. Later that year, she released Throw Down Your Arms, a collection of reggae classics from the likes of Burning Spear, Peter Tosh, and Bob Marley that managed to reach the number four spot on Billboard's Top Reggae Albums chart. O'Connor returned to the studio the following year to begin work on her first album of all-new material since Faith and Courage. The resulting Theology, inspired by the complexities of the world post-9/11, was released in 2007 through Koch Records on the artist's own imprint, That's Why There's Chocolate & Vanilla.

O'Connor's ninth studio album, 2012's How About I Be Me (And You Be You)?, tackled familiar subjects like sexuality, religion, hope, and despair, all of which were topics that dominated her post-Theology personal and public life. After a relatively quiet period, O'Connor found herself once again embroiled in controversy in 2013 after a personal dispute with singer Miley Cyrus, whom O'Connor wrote an open letter to warning her of exploitation and the dangers of the music industry. Cyrus also responded with an open letter, which seemed to mock the Irish singer's documented mental health issues. O'Connor's tenth album, I'm Not Bossy, I'm the Boss appeared in August 2014. Inspired by Lean In's female empowerment campaign "Ban Bossy," the set was a rock-oriented and melodious affair as heard on the lead single "Take Me to the Church”.

To mark the upcoming fifty-fifth birthday of Sinéad O'Connor, I have assembled a playlist with some of her very best tracks. There are rumour of a new album, No Veteran Dies Alone, coming along soon. Her last album, I'm Not Bossy, I'm the Boss, was released in 2014. As you can tell from this career-spanning playlist, there is no one in the music world…

LIKE the magnificent Sinéad O'Connor.

FEATURE: If the Queen of Music Were to Return… Speculation and Possibility Around a New Kate Bush Album

FEATURE:

 

 

If the Queen of Music Were to Return…

Speculation and Possibility Around a New Kate Bush Album

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I am returning to this subject…

so soon, as there is a sense of anticipation in the air regarding Kate Bush music. It has been confirmed that Big Boi has recorded a song with her. We are not sure the form Bush’s vocal will take, though one gets the feeling the song will be out by the end of the year. The Kate Bush News Facebook page asked, a week or two ago, what people would expect or want were a new Kate Bush album to be announced. This is something I have thought about frequently. To be fair, no announcement has been made at all. One feels that it cannot be too long until something arrives in the world. It has been ten years since 50 Words for Snow was released. Although, technically, Bush released the live album, Before the Dawn, in 2016, that does not count as a studio album – even though they are new vocals from her. I have said before, when a new album does arrive, it is unlikely to veer too far from 50 Words for Snow. It is not as thought she will come back to her earlier sound or something like The Dreaming. Some said – on the Facebook post Kate Bush News sent out - how they would like to hear something like Director’s Cut. That album was also released in 2011, and it saw Bush recording new versions of songs that originally appeared on the albums The Sensual World (1989) and The Red Shoes (1993).

 Whether she would ever go back to albums like Never for Ever (1980) or Lionheart (1978) and think about re-examining them at all. She is not averse to retrospection, if it was called for or something that she needed to do. It is more likely an original album will come. Whereas before I have said that an eleventh studio album will mix 2005’s Aerial and 50 Words for Snow in terms of its sound and style, I have had a bit of a rethink. One might observe that, as Bush is an artist who never repeats herself and keeps on venturing into new sonic space, it is likely that she will add new layers to her music. The point of these features is not to pressure Bush into making music (not that she will ever see anything I write). It is more an excitement of wondering whether 2022 will be a year when we get an album from her. A lot of people who have been discussing Kate Bush and a possible album have said that she might go more into Jazz territory. We get some of that on 50 Words for Snow. Maybe an album that is even more experimental and instrumental. That might be something that would catch people off guard. I have been listening back to 1989’s The Sensual World. This is an album that was acclaimed when it came out, yet it remains underrated and under-played in my view. I love the percussion through that album and the overall sound. I predict that, were Bush to put out music in the future, she may well nod to this album.

Naturally, nobody anywhere can say exactly what Kate Bush’s next album will sound like. Maybe she will look to release an album in a different, less conventional way. I can imagine the pandemic has been as tough for her as anyone. Perhaps, whilst recording might have been gradual or slow, there was plenty of time for reflection and writing. Working with Big Boi might have instilled some Hip-Hop sensibilities or inspired her to go a little left-field and serve up an album that is like The Dreaming, in terms of the clash of sounds and something a little odder. Even as I am typing, I am contradicting myself and wondering if, actually, Bush could surprise everyone! One thing that is certain is that, whenever (and if) she does choose to release an album, the last twenty months or so would have affected her. Bush has never been overly-personal with her albums, though she has addressed tough subjects previously. Whereas Aerial and 50 Words for Snow were a little more conceptual and there was this feeling of weather and the elements playing a part, I think something darker and more urgent might make its way into Bush’s writing. Whether that reflects the growing climate crisis or the sense of separation we have felt, I wonder if she will explore a concept or suite of songs like she did on Hounds of Love (with The Ninth Wave) and Aerial (with A Sky of Honey).

Bush has collaborated with other artists through her career. Her albums have always consisted or a variety of musicians. That is not going to change. One would ask, on another album, would she include as many musicians as she has on Aerial and Hounds of Love, or would it be more scaled-back? There are still logistical challenges at the moment, but I reckon, when she is in a position to record, that there will be quite a few musicians and players in the mix. Maybe not as many vocal collaborations as on 50 Words for Snow (including Elton John on Snowed in at Wheeler Street), but there will be that desire in her to join with other musicians. This is the last feature (promise) that I write that asks about a new album and what it might sound like. I guess the next big Kate Bush news we will get is when the song with Big Boi is released, whether that is next month or early next year. After that, there will be various anniversaries to mark. Every week, I see so many fans write about her music or songs that have impacted them. Bush is someone who can affect so many people and remain right at the forefront without releasing new music. Such is the strength and importance of what she has already released! A lot of people are looking ahead to a more positive and optimistic next year. In terms of music release, it is hard t say which artists will bring out an album. There are millions of people around the world who hope that Kate Bush…

IS among them.

FEATURE: The Lockdown Playlist: Some (Early) Christmas Presents: A Festive Mix

FEATURE:

 

 

The Lockdown Playlist

PHOTO CREDIT: Isaac Martin 

Some (Early) Christmas Presents: A Festive Mix

___________

MAYBE it is a tad early…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Laura Beth Snipes

to be going in with the Christmas tunes, but they are being played a lot at the moment. At around this time every year, I put out a selection of Christmas tracks. Because there is a bit of uncertainty around restrictions this Christmas – whether rising cases and a new variant will mean we are locked down or there are travel curbs -, I think we all need a bit of cheer. This Lockdown Playlist is a selection of classic and more modern Christmas cuts. From well-known standards through to some that are fresh this year, it is a sacksful of early Christmas presents that should provide some energy at the very least! I think that any day in December is okay when it comes to getting the Christmas songs out! Here are some of my favourite new and older songs that really set the tone. If you are in need of a Christmas mix, then the songs below…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Szabo Viktor

GIVE food for thought.

FEATURE: Hella Good: No Doubt’s Rock Steady at Twenty

FEATURE:

 

 

Hella Good

 No Doubt’s Rock Steady at Twenty

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NOT many albums…

are celebrating anniversaries at this time of year. No Doubt’s fifth studio album, Rock Steady, was released on 11th December, 2001. The band began writing the album with initial recording sessions in Los Angeles and San Francisco. They travelled to London and Jamaica to work with various performers, songwriters, and producers. I think that it is a very different-sounding album compared to their 1990s output. Many reviewers gave it a low score or were not that hot on it. I feel it is an album with some sensational moments – such as Hella Good and Hey Baby! -, capped by performances from a band at the top of their game. Gwen Stefani’s vocals are especially addictive and strong! I feel one problem some had with Rock Steady is that there is less of the guitar, bass and drum sound of their other albums. There are more electronic sounds from keyboards. In 2001, there were quite a lot of artists nodding back to the 1980s and that sound. Stefani, to me, is the star of Rock Steady in terms of her vocal range and the emotional impact she provides. I wonder whether, on its twentieth anniversary, there will be any reissues of the album. It is one of my favourite No Doubt albums. My favourite song of theirs, Hey Baby, is a classic from 2001. Rock Steady is a terrific album that should be played a lot more.

I want to source a couple of positive reviews for Rock Steady. In their assessment of a hugely underrated album, SLANT had this to say:

“With Rock Steady, released in December of 2001, No Doubt completed their transmogrification into life-sized cartoons and unwittingly supplied the world with its gooiest post-9/11 balm. “It’s icky, it’s sticky, ooh!” Gwen coos on the propulsive “Waiting Room,” a collaboration with the artist formerly known as The Artist Formerly Known As Prince that was originally meant for Saturn. Prince helped the multihued frontwoman of the world’s biggest ska-pop outfit further explore her inner-kitsch and the finished product fits snugly alongside the electro-pop, dancehall, and new wave of Rock Steady than it ever would have on No Doubt’s previous effort. While slower tracks like “Running” and “Underneath It All,” co-written by The Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart, sound like super-polished Saturn leftovers, the album offers up more of the new wave deliciousness that was promised with 1999’s “New,” the band’s collaboration with Talking Head Jerry Harrison—“Don’t Let Me Down” and “Platinum Blonde Life,” produced by The Cars’ Ric Ocasek, both deliver a head-rush circa 1981.

Not since Blondie—an earlier example of a band eclipsed, perhaps, by its frontwoman—has a rock act so effortlessly, irreverently, and fashionably skidded across so many different genre boundaries at one time. The retro “Hella Good” previewed Gwen’s dance-pop ‘80s fetish, which came to a head on last month’s Love. Angel. Music. Baby.

But Rock Steady never abandons No Doubt’s more obvious roots; the dancehall rocker “Hey Baby” and the feel-good dub of “Start the Fire” find the band sunnier (and tighter) than ever. Even beneath the sheen of “Underneath It All” you can hear Tom Dumont’s signature guitar riffs. And Gwen’s lyrics are still personal, only the focus is no longer bassist Tony Kanal, but future husband Gavin Rossdale. Impatience is a central theme, whether it’s long distance lust on the William Orbit-produced “Making Out” (“The flowers arrive to my surprise/But that just ain’t good enough”), patience on “Waiting Room” (“What a price this traveling love”), and trust and suspicion on “In My Head” (witnessing her own band’s backstage antics surely didn’t help—see “Hey Baby”).

Rock Steady’s title track is the centerpiece of the album, a dub lullaby that seems to tie the whole record together thematically (“Love is like a punishment/Homegirl here to represent,” Gwen sings) and musically (not that it needed tying together, despite its seven different production teams). Rock Steady is rife with the kind of songs that conjure vivid images in the listener’s mind, and that’s a testament to both the band’s music and Gwen’s lyrics. When first hearing “Detective,” you can almost see the film noirish video that could have been. The track is home to a tarty hip-hop melody that was probably picked up somewhere between Gwen’s duet with Eve and the band’s studio dabblings with Dr. Dre and the Neptunes (only one of those collaborations, “Hella Good,” made it onto the final record). But personality crises aside, Rock Steady is as consistent an album (and as enjoyable a listen) as one can expect from a band that refuses to stand still.

I am going to end with a review from AllMusic. They started the review by stating that Rock Steady is an album from a band getting back into the swing of things having left fairly big gaps between previous releases:   

“Five years separated Tragic Kingdom and its 2000 follow-up, Return of Saturn. About 15 months separated Saturn and its sequel, Rock Steady -- a clear sign that No Doubt was getting back to business, but it's really a more accurate reflection of Gwen Stefani's stature in 2001. Once Saturn started slipping down the charts -- apparently, the kids weren't ready to hear a post-new wave album about facing your thirties with your biological clock ticking -- Stefani started popping up all over the place, appearing on Moby's remix of "South Side" and duetting with Eve on "Let Me Blow Your Mind." These were major, major hits, restoring luster to Gwen Stefani, and therefore, No Doubt, while giving them some hip-hop/dance credibility (albeit rather small cred), so it was time to turn out another record to capitalize on this re-opened window. Smartly, they followed a Madonna blueprint by working with several producers -- Nellee Hooper, Sly & Robbie, Ric Ocasek, Prince, Steely & Clevie -- and running it through Mark "Spike" Stent for mixing and additional production, thereby giving it a unified sound while covering all the bases.

And they certainly cover all their bases, retaining their footing in new wave and ska revival while ratcheting up their fondness for reggae (specifically, dancehall and ragga, unfortunately; the guest toasters are the only real misstep here) and their newly acquired taste for dance and hip-hop. It's a testament to No Doubt's abilities as a band (not to mention their sheer likeability; they're just so good-hearted and unpretentious, it's hard to imagine getting angered about this band) that it neither sounds like pandering to the charts or the opening salvo in Stefani's solo career -- it simply sounds like a good, hooky, stylish mainstream pop record, something that's rather rare in 2001”.

I really love Rock Steady, and I feel that it is an album that did not get as much credit as it deserved when it came out. With some truly terrific songs throughout, go and listen to it ahead of its anniversary of 11th December. I have been dipping in and out of the album since 2001 and am still not bored of it! Twenty years after its release, Rock Steady still sounds…

AS fresh as ever.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: The Iconic Shots: The ‘Classic in Black’ Shot, 2005 (Trevor Leighton)

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: The Iconic Shots

PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton 

The ‘Classic in Black’ Shot, 2005 (Trevor Leighton)

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THERE are not that many interviews…

from 2005 with Kate Bush. I wanted to use one, just so that I can give some context to a classic photo of hers. I have used a couple in my interview series I ran a bit back. I am going to return to an interview I have used before so that I can give background to the great shot at the top of this feature. I often associate the best Kate Bush photos with the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Whilst there are fewer images of her available since then, the release of Aerial in 2005 meant that we got a few new photos – 2011’s 50 Words for Snow provided even more. I wonder how many people thought that an album like Aerial would arrive when it did. Or at all. It is a terrific double album (her first) that announced a sort of return to the spotlight. For other albums, Bush has been photographed by John carder Bush (her brother), Guido Harari or another photographer. Even though there were not many images taken of her in 2005, one by Trevor Leighton stands out. Bush looks classic in black. It is a mix between a painted portrait and something candid. Bush, who would have been forty-seven, still looks so young! She looks dignified and strong, yet there is something quite alluring and mysterious about her look. Whilst not as enigmatic and fascinating as Gered Mankowitz’s shot of her in a pink leotard from 1978, this is the (slightly) older artist as radiant and engaging as ever! It is a beautiful photo that did have an outtake or two. The photo that we see was given to the National Portrait Gallery by Leighton.

Small wonder something that is like a work of art should make its way into this feature. Trevor Leighton has taken a few photos of Kate Bush. I am going to return to photographers like Guido Harari and John Carder Bush in future instalments of this series. In the 2005 photo by Treavor Leighton, Bush does look content and relaxed. As a new-ish mother (her son, Bertie, was born in 1998), and with a new album out after twelve years, I guess that there would have been this relief and degree of triumph and accomplishment. You can tell by listening to Aerial that Bush was re-inspired and had rekindled a certain desire and genius. 1993’s The Red Shoes, whilst a great album, does show some fatigue or weaker moments. Perhaps Bush was in need of some rest and time away. Aerial is her at her very best. Related to that incredible shot by Trevor Leighton, there is an interview that Bush conducted with The Guardian that provides some background to Aerial. Bush herself shared a certain public curiosity as to whether she would finish and release a new album:

“This is how 12 years disappear if you're Kate Bush. You release The Red Shoes in 1993, your seventh album in a 15-year career characterised by increasingly ambitious records, ever-lengthening recording schedules and compulsive attention to detail. You are emotionally drained after the death of your mother Hannah but, against the advice of some of your friends, you throw yourself into The Line, the Cross & the Curve, a 45-minute video album released the following year that - despite its merits - you now consider to be "a load of bollocks". You take two years off to recharge your batteries, because you can. In 1996, you write a song called King of the Mountain. You have a bit of a think and take some more time off, similarly, because you can.

 Two years later, while pregnant, you write a song about artistic endeavour called An Architect's Dream. You give birth to a boy, Albert, in 1998 and you and your guitarist partner Danny McIntosh find yourselves "completely shattered for a couple of years". You move house and spend months doing it up. You convert the garage into a studio, but being a full-time mother who chooses not to employ a nanny or housekeeper, it's hard to find time to actually work in there. Bit by bit, the ideas come and a notion forms in your mind to make a double album, though you have to adjust to a new working regime of stolen moments as opposed to the 14-hour days of old. Your son begins school and suddenly time opens up and though progress doesn't exactly accelerate ("That's a bit too strong a word"), two years of more concentrated effort later, the album is complete. You look up from the mixing desk and it is 2005.

If the outside world was wondering whether Kate Bush would ever finish her long-awaited album, then it was a feeling shared by its creator. "Oh yeah," she sighs. "I mean, there were so many times I thought, I'll have the album finished this year, definitely, we'll get it out this year. Then there were a couple of years where I thought, I'm never gonna do this. If I could make albums quicker, I'd be on a roll wouldn't I? Everything just seems to take so much time. I don't know why. Time ... evaporates."

 There was a story that some EMI execs had come down to see you and you'd said something like: "Here's what I've been working on," and then produced some cakes from your oven. True? "No! I don't know where that came from. I thought that was quite funny actually. It presents me as this homely creature, which is all right, isn't it?"

Even if apocryphal, it's a nugget that reveals something about Bush's relationship with a record label she signed to 30 years ago. For a long time now, she hasn't taken a penny in advances and refuses to play them a note of her works-in-progress. In the latter stages of Aerial's creation, EMI chairman Tony Wadsworth would come down to visit Bush and leave having heard nothing. "We'd just chat and then he'd go away again," Bush says. "We ended up just laughing about it, really."

If the completion of Aerial put paid to one set of anxieties for Bush, then its impending release has brought another - not least, a brace of newspaper stories keen to push the "rock's mystery recluse" angle. It seems the more she craves privacy, the more it is threatened. "For the last 12 years, I've felt really privileged to be living such a normal life," she explains. "It's so a part of who I am. It's so important to me to do the washing, do the Hoovering. Friends of mine in the business don't know how dishwashers work. For me, that's frightening. I want to be in a position where I can function as a human being. Even more so now where you've got this sort of truly silly preoccupation with celebrities. Just because somebody's been in an ad on TV, so what? Who gives a toss?"

A clock somewhere strikes two and the chipper, ever attentive McIntosh arrives with tea, pizza, avocado with balsamic vinegar and cream cake for afters, only to be playfully admonished by his partner, who protests: "I can't eat all this shit!"

 If there is perhaps less mystery to Kate Bush than we might have expected, her music remains reassuringly the same ecstatic alchemy of the humdrum and otherworldly. Recalling the hello-clouds wonder of The Big Sky from 1985's Hounds of Love or the frank paean to menstruation that is Strange Phenomena from her debut, The Kick Inside, Aerial finds Bush marvelling in the magic of the everyday: the wind animating a skirt hanging on a clothes line, the trace of footprints leading into the sea, the indecipherable codes of birdsong.

But the one track on Aerial that best bridges the divide between Bush's domestic and creative existences is the haunting piano ballad Mrs Bartolozzi, in which a housewife character drifts off into a nostalgic reverie while watching clothes entwining in her washer-dryer. It's also the one track set to polarise opinion among listeners, with its eerie, unhinged chorus of "washing machine ... washing machine". Bush acknowledges as much.

"A couple of people who heard it early on," she says, dipping a spoon into her avocado, "they either really liked it or they found it very uncomfortable. I liked the idea of it being a very small subject. Clothes are such a strong part of who a human being is. Y'know, skin cells, the smell. Somebody thought that maybe there'd been this murder going on, I thought that was great. I love the ambiguity".

One of the best photographs taken of Kate Bush, Trevor Leighton’s 2005 portrait is one that draws the eye and provokes a range of responses. As I said, Bush doesn’t seemed to have aged since her earliest career days. They say that a picture paints a thousand words. Trevor Leighton’s mesmeric photo says…

 EVEN more than that.

FEATURE: Vinyl Corner: The Dave Brubeck Quartet - Time Out

FEATURE:

 

 

Vinyl Corner

The Dave Brubeck Quartet - Time Out

___________

FOR this Vinyl Corner…

I am recommending the classic Time Out from The Dave Brubeck Quartet. Released in 1959 on Columbia Records, it was recorded at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York City. Even if you are not a Jazz fan, I would urge people to get the album on vinyl. It is a masterpiece that still sounds breathtaking over sixty years since it was released. Even though the album is known for its famous hit, Take Five (which was actually written by Paul Desmond), there is so much to appreciate throughout the album. As I do with these features, I am going to source a couple of reviews. Before that, this article talked about Time Out and why the signature and sound of Take Five was especially bold and unusual in 1959’s Jazz world:

“Hollywood knows a good stereotype when it sees one, hick or slick, and “Brubeck” meant cerebral, cool, West Coast. The Dave Brubeck Quartet was already one of the hottest ensembles in jazz in the ’50s, playing hundreds of concerts, and releasing multiple LPs, every year. Brubeck’s face had been on the cover of Time magazine in 1954, Jailhouse Rock came out in 1957, and it would still be two years before the Quartet had its incandescent burst into the stratosphere—and into jazz history—with the release of Time Out.

Led by the hit single “Take Five,” written by alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, Time Out was the first jazz album to sell a million copies. It broke many conventions in achieving that. For one thing, it was a jazz album with nothing but original pieces. No comforting “standards” were on it to reassure buyers wary of new music.

For another, the cover art was a contemporary, abstract painting. People like to look at faces, especially of celebrities, but there were no photos of the popular musicians greeting the public, just egg shapes and abutting slaps of color.

But the biggest risk, of course, was the music. “Take Five” added one little beat to the normal 4/4 pulse and made it 5/4, an unheard-of time signature for jazz. It’s found in avant-garde music or in folk traditions tucked away in Hungary, India... or in Turkey, where Dave discovered it. On tour, he heard local musicians playing odd rhythms and decided right there that he’d make a jazz album employing unusual time signatures. “Blue Rondo à la Turk” in a crazily sliced 9/8 was born there, and so was Brubeck’s lasting popularity.

These are beats you can’t dance to and can’t sing to, or so we’d think. The album was a gauntlet slammed into the ground of jazz. With Time Out, it’s as if Dave Brubeck were announcing, “Ladies and gentlemen, there is only one rule in jazz. It’s got to swing. And we can swing in 4, 3, 5, 7, 9, or anything. Here we go.” And off they went. “Take Five” was not only the Quartet’s biggest hit, it is still the biggest jazz single in history.

Desmond’s tune, and his sound, epitomize the ice-smooth and pungent spice of his talent. He likened his own playing to a dry martini, and there’s never been a better description. His supple, mid-air twists still amaze, but he’s a giant because of the non-headlining gifts he prized above all others. In a letter to his father he listed them: “beauty, simplicity, originality, discrimination, and sincerity.”

He was Charlie Parker’s favorite alto player. Desmond admired Parker and other bop musicians, but knew he could never be one. He joked, “I have won several prizes as the world’s slowest alto player, as well as a special award in 1961 for quietness.”

Joe Morello is the kind of drummer whose talent knocks you down in stages. He’s not the freight train that Art Blakey was, nor a Buddy Rich Formula One race car. Philly Joe Jones played like he was falling down a flight of stairs and then strolled away smiling, but Joe Morello was Picasso, painting himself into cubist corners and turning the trap set into a mirage. Or like M.C. Escher, with finely detailed, perfectly executed stick-work leading you down a stairwell and out onto a roof.

But he could shout, too. His solo on the “Take Five” single sneaks in, stutter-stepping, but before long he’s slamming doors, or the same door, over and over, until he’s satisfied that it’ll say shut. Then he skips away on the ride cymbal.

With time-bending sax and shape-shifting drums, the bass player had better be strong, and Eugene Wright is that rock. His playing has been described as “Kansas City,” which, to my ears, in the context of the Dave Brubeck Quartet, means solid and fluid at the same time. It’s steady but always singing and tuneful. Wright is more than just the reliable springboard for the others, but a master technician of blues and feel. The little laugh at the end of “Unsquare Dance,” a blues Rubik's Cube from the Time Further Out album, is Wright’s relief that their layered syncopations over 7/4 actually worked!

The secret of Brubeck’s music, though, and of his success, has nothing to do with style. His impact on jazz isn’t because he's cool or West Coast. It’s not that Brubeck didn’t play standards (he did). It’s not even rhythm or time signatures or the supposed braininess Hollywood made him the poster boy for. If you want intellect, after all, bop’s your game.

No, Dave Brubeck’s secret is that his music is beautiful—unerringly, dreamily, laughingly beautiful. Paul Desmond’s playing, Joe Morello’s, Eugene Wright’s: all beautiful. He wrote new standards. Jazz or no jazz, he wrote songs, and each solo within the song was also a song. Dave Brubeck made music like no one else. That is his secret, and that is his legacy”.

It is a good time to get to some reviews. As I said, one does not need to be a Jazz aficionado or lover to understand what Time Out is all about. It is such a rich, detailed and wonderfully performed album that everyone should own. This is what AllMusic said in their review:

“Dave Brubeck's defining masterpiece, Time Out is one of the most rhythmically innovative albums in jazz history, the first to consciously explore time signatures outside of the standard 4/4 beat or 3/4 waltz time. It was a risky move -- Brubeck's record company wasn't keen on releasing such an arty project, and many critics initially roasted him for tampering with jazz's rhythmic foundation. But for once, public taste was more advanced than that of the critics. Buoyed by a hit single in altoist Paul Desmond's ubiquitous "Take Five," Time Out became an unexpectedly huge success, and still ranks as one of the most popular jazz albums ever. That's a testament to Brubeck and Desmond's abilities as composers, because Time Out is full of challenges both subtle and overt -- it's just that they're not jarring. Brubeck's classic "Blue Rondo à la Turk" blends jazz with classical form and Turkish folk rhythms, while "Take Five," despite its overexposure, really is a masterpiece; listen to how well Desmond's solo phrasing fits the 5/4 meter, and how much Joe Morello's drum solo bends time without getting lost. The other selections are richly melodic as well, and even when the meters are even, the group sets up shifting polyrhythmic counterpoints that nod to African and Eastern musics. Some have come to disdain Time Out as its become increasingly synonymous with upscale coffeehouse ambience, but as someone once said of Shakespeare, it's really very good in spite of the people who like it. It doesn't just sound sophisticated -- it really is sophisticated music, which lends itself to cerebral appreciation, yet never stops swinging. Countless other musicians built on its pioneering experiments, yet it's amazingly accessible for all its advanced thinking, a rare feat in any art form. This belongs in even the most rudimentary jazz collection”.

To round off, here is a link, where All About Jazz reassessed Time Out in 2011. They start by saying that the album is not the only Jazz milestone and masterpiece released in 1959:

“The album is one of two masterpieces made in 1959 sharing that fate. The other is trumpeter Miles Davis' Kind of Blue (Columbia). But Brubeck's album has suffered the most. Davis' studied cultivation of his image, along with such spurious qualifications for hipsterdom as his bouts of heroin and cocaine addiction, mean that Kind of Blue's magic still shines through the cloak of over-familiarity.

Time Out, on the other hand, was made by a quartet which included three nerdy looking white guys in college professor spectacles. Plus it spawned an international hit single in "Take Five"/"Blue Rondo A La Turk." With all that going against it, you had—and, perhaps, still have—to be truly hip to recognize the album's perfection.

Despite its eventual commercial success, Time Out was slow off the blocks. Columbia executives thought Brubeck's exploration of unusual time signatures (5/4, 9/8, 6/4, 3/4) would baffle the public and they did little to promote the disc. But the public proved to be thoroughly unbaffled and sales multiplied through word of mouth, fired by the quartet's relentless touring. Finally, a year after Time Out's release, the "Take Five" single was put out and history made.

Columbia then got the group back in the studio in short order to record a follow-up, Time Further Out (1961), another fine album which included the hit "It's a Raggy Waltz."

"Take Five" includes one of the most thrilling drum solos ever recorded, a 2:20 master class in percussive accentuation, colorization and structure. Unlike the rest of Time Out, which was composed by Brubeck, the tune was written by alto saxophonist Paul Desmond. "It was never supposed to be a hit," Desmond said later. "It was supposed to be a Joe Morello drum solo." Morello had joined the quartet in 1956 over Desmond's initial objection: the saxophonist was concerned that Morello's muscular style would jar with his own lyrical approach. Desmond was won over, and when the composer royalties for "Take Five" started pouring in, he must have been relieved Brubeck had stood his ground and insisted on hiring Morello.

There is much, much more to love about Time Out, most particularly Desmond's deceptively fragile alto and Brubeck's unique blend of blues tonalities, two-fisted block chording, and advanced, European-derived harmonization. And a bunch of great tunes including "Take Five," "Blue Rondo A La Turk," "Strange Meadow Lark," "Three to Get Ready" and "Kathy's Waltz," named after Brubeck's daughter, Cathy, but misspelled by the sleeve's typographer.

If Time Out has become a little inaudible in your life, it is time to play it again and marvel”.

A magnificent and hugely important album that definitely warrants more mainstream attention, 1959’s Time Out is perfect on vinyl. From Blue Rondo à la Turk to Pick Up Sticks through Take Five, there are few albums as mesmerising as The Dave Brubeck Quartet’s finest work. This is a great album that…

VINYL was intended for.

FEATURE: All Yours: Back to the Mighty Babooshka

FEATURE:

 

 

All Yours

PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush 

Back to the Mighty Babooshka

___________

I do some song-specific features…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush on the German T.V. show, Rock Pop, on 13th September, 1980 performing Babooshka

about Kate Bush now and then. The reason I am returning to Babooshka is that I have new angles. In fact, I saw photos shared online regarding the single cover; the shots that were taken to promote it. I think John Carder Bush’s (her brother) photos are among the very best on that shoot. Released on 27th June, 1980, Babooshka was the second single (after Breathing) from Bush’s third studio album, Never for Ever. I will go over a couple of bits that I have included in other features about the song. Undoubtedly one of her greatest tracks, I was thinking about Bush’s album openers and how they draw you in. A couple of weeks back, Adele asked Spotify to disable the shuffle feature so that she and other artists could have their albums enjoyed in the running order intended. Although I have suggested in other features how a couple of Bush’s albums might be improved with the rearrangement of a few songs, she is an artist who takes a lot of time to consider the sequencing. Never for Ever starts remarkably with Babooshka! It is a song that showcases the sonic leap Bush took between Never for Ever and her previous album, Lionheart (1978). Evocative and quite epic, it starts an album that remains underrated. Prior to coming to some new thoughts about this song, it is worth getting some story and quotes from Kate Bush herself. Produced alongside Jon Kelly and reaching number five in the U.K, this is a song that has a remarkably memorable music video to boot!

Bush performed Babooshka live on a variety of European shows. The costumes she wore for each are incredible (I found a video from 1979 where Bush discussed playing live and the fact that she wanted to remain grounded). I shall come to that. First, and to get some explanation behind the song, the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia helps out:

“Apparently it is grandmother, it's also a headdress that people wear. But when I wrote the song it was just a name that literally came into my mind, I've presumed I've got it from a fairy story I'd read when I was a child. And after having written the song a series of incredible coincidences happened where I'd turned on the television and there was Donald Swan singing about Babooshka. So I thought, "Well, there's got to be someone who's actually called Babooshka." So I was looking through Radio Times and there, another coincidence, there was an opera called Babooshka. Apparently she was the lady that the three kings went to see because the star stopped over her house and they thought "Jesus is in there".' So they went in and he wasn't. And they wouldn't let her come with them to find the baby and she spent the rest of her life looking for him and she never found him. And also a friend of mine had a cat called Babooshka. So these really extraordinary things that kept coming up when in fact it was just a name that came into my head at the time purely because it fitted. (Peter Powell interview, Radio 1 (UK), 11 October 1980)

It was really a theme that has fascinated me for some time. It's based on a theme that is often used in folk songs, which is where the wife of the husband begins to feel that perhaps he's not faithful. And there's no real strength in her feelings, it's just more or less paranoia suspicions, and so she starts thinking that she's going to test him, just to see if he's faithful. So what she does is she gets herself a pseudonym, which happens to be Babooshka, and she sends him a letter. And he responds very well to the letter, because as he reads it, he recognises the wife that he had a couple of years ago, who was happy, in the letter. And so he likes it, and she decides to take it even further and get a meeting together to see how he reacts to this Babooshka lady instead of her. When he meets her, again because she is so similar to his wife, the one that he loves, he's very attracted to her. Of course she is very annoyed and the break in the song is just throwing the restaurant at him...  (...) The whole idea of the song is really the futility and the stupidness of humans and how by our own thinking, spinning around in our own ideas we come up with completely paranoid facts. So in her situation she was in fact suspicious of a man who was doing nothing wrong, he loved her very much indeed. Through her own suspicions and evil thoughts she's really ruining the relationship. (Countdown Australia, 1980)”.

There are so many things to love about Babooshka. The video alone is one! It is iconic in her cannon. Her videos up until this point had been original and had lots of interesting things in them but, compare Babooshka to videos for The Man with the Child in His Eyes, Hammer Horror and even Wow, and Babooshka seems like a step forward. The video depicts Bush beside a double bass (symbolising her/the protagonist’s husband). She is wearing a black bodysuit and a veil in her role as the embittered wife. When the chorus comes, her outfit changes into a mythlike Russian costume as her alter-ego, Babooshka. It is a very sexy and bold moment that announced that Bush was taking her music somewhere new! The use of the Fairlight CMI (she was introduced to the technological goldmine by Peter Gabriel) adds some great effects (including the sound of breaking glass). Some great balalaika by Paddy Bush and one of Bush’s most confident and fascinating vocal performances makes Babooshka this treasure of a song. I feel Babooshka is one of Bush’s more under-appreciated songs. That might sound insane considering that is charted well and is played a lot. When critics and fans rank her singles, Babooshka does not make the top five all of the time. I think it warrants a place there. One cannot overlook the impact of Wuthering Heights and The Man with the Child in His Eyes but, in 1980, Bush seemed to be making this statement with Babooshka. It is so different to anything that she had released to that point. The lyrics paint this beautiful picture of mistrust and mystery. One of my favourite ever Kate Bush verses is this: “And when he laid eyes on her/He got the feeling they had met before/Uncanny/How she/Reminds him of his little lady/Capacity to give him all he needs”.

There are a couple of detailed articles that I want to source from. The first, from Dreams of Orgonon examines the story and inspirations behind the song. I love what is observed about Baboshka’s relationship dynamic, and the moral ambiguity:

“Wuthering Heights” was a reunion of lovers. “Babooshka” relates the slow burn of a dysfunctional relationship, culminating in a glam psychotic break. The song’s title character acts as if Bush intended to finally write the Catherine of Brontë’s Wuthering Heights: a petty, jealous hooligan ruins her relationship with her partner in a frantic bout of possessiveness.  Her plan, of course, is barmy — Babooshka tests her husband’s loyalty by catfishing him through “scented letters” (not a great plan — what happens if Babooshka’s husband finds these letters on a desk while the lady of the house makes herself some Earl Grey? Somebody make a short film about this). Babooshka uses these letters to arrange a tête-à-tête between her husband and her assumed personality — “just like/his wife/but how she was before the years flew by.” The song is unclear on whether Babooshka is recognized by her husband, merely suggesting he gives into her whims (he’s absolutely a sub). Babooshka’s self-poisoning narcissism breaks their relationship, creating a process of martial recursion in which the fear of a relationship’s ending itself ends that relationship.

But what of the relationship’s nature? The details of the emotional split between the couple is expressed vaguely. “Babooshka” is predicated on its protagonist’s desire to “test her husband,” and only supplies the occasional detail on the couple’s relationship. When the husband reads the catfish letters (someone please write a biography of me and title it The Catfish Letters), he observes that she resembles his wife “before the tears/and how she was before the years flew by.” Evidently their marriage was happy at one point, before some cataclysm ruptured it and damned them to a joyless union. Before Babooshka turned to suspicion and jealousy, she had the “capacity to give him all he needs” (we could dedicate an entire piece to the fact that the husband obviously has a mommy kink, but let’s try to keep our readership here). Her scheme to win him over is an expression of desire to return to the joy of their early married years, an act of futile nostalgia. The fantasy she enacts is not simply toxic; it’s regressive and pitiful.

Of course, the song’s moral ambiguity is its most interesting aspect. While there’s an almost reactionary slant to the way “Babooshka” perceives relationships, particularly in the way it treats gender along binary and determinist lines, Bush does push against the grain. She often demonstrates a willingness to interrogate the internal experiences of her characters, particularly women characters. Exploring the ramifications of jealousy is crucial to imbuing her characters with interiority. Bush has Babooshka’s husband failing similarly, even if she doesn’t realize it. Most texts are buzzing with suggestions their authors haven’t considered. In the case of “Babooshka,” Bush enacts a complex meditation on how gendered expectations can poison relationships. Babooshka lets her suspicions and preoccupation with re-becoming young and glamorous overcome her life, and her husband lets his treacherous predilections towards young beauty lead him astray. No party comes out morally in the clear, and yet neither is entirely unsympathetic. They’re trapped in an ugly binary where people are programmed to perform in ways incompatible with human psychology. If there’s a way to use the framework of folklore in a thoughtful and modern way, this is it.

As such, “Babooshka” makes the case that Kate Bush’s songwriting can be multiple things at once and create a conflicting hive of meaning, and that Bush’s love for the archaic is hardly blinded by a nostalgic haze. She demonstrates a consistent willingness to interrogate how stories like these work, how human beings act when plugged into myth and folklore, and the ways in which these situations are incompatible with humanity. Some of the most complex women in fiction are characters in Kate Bush songs. Never for Ever’s status as the first studio album by a female artist to reach #1 in the UK remains significant for a number of reasons. If Dreams of Orgonon has a thesis, it’s that Kate Bush is a traditionally-minded person who can’t stop herself from writing feminist songs. Break the glass. Howl “Babooshka, ya-ya!” The 1980s are here, and there’s a new swordmistress of chaos to herald them”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

Many do not realise that Bush’s songs, in various ways, have helped shape how we view various cultures and nations. Babooshka’s Russian-sounding/named title – though misspelt - was a bit of a breakthrough. At a time when the Cold War was dividing the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, not that many artists – certainty in the West – were writing anything that nodded to the Soviet Union. The Guardian wrote an interesting article in 2014 (as Bush came to the stage for her residency, Before the Dawn). They argue how, as many had a dodgy and stereotyped view of Russians, Babooshka helped changed things:

“Since the concerts were announced, everyone has had something to say about why Kate Bush matters. For me Bush’s music touched parts of the brain that other less cerebral 70s singers didn’t come close to reaching.

For instance, her 1978 No 1 single Wuthering Heights rescued Emily Brontë’s novel from languishing dustily on school exam syllabuses, unloved by unmotivated teenage readers, and gave it a new generation of admirers. The plaintive refrain, “Heathcliff, it’s me, I’m Cathy, I’ve come home,” brought chillingly back to life the uncanny nightmare episode at the start of the book.

For me, though, the key song in Kate Bush’s repertoire is not Wuthering Heights but Babooshka, her Russian-ish single from 1980 – a hit in many countries, not least Britain, France and America.

As a London schoolgirl studying Russian at the time, I didn’t care at all that Kate Bush pronounced the Russian name with the stress in the wrong place, and clearly had no idea that it meant “granny”. I just remember being gobsmacked to realise that any sort of Russian theme could come up in the charts at all – let alone one that didn’t fit either of the two prevailing Russian stereotypes. In those iron curtain days, to my mind Russians were either Ealing countesses, the children and grandchildren of the dispossessed, impoverished, desperately genteel White Russians who’d escaped from the 1917 revolution with nothing but their titles. Or they were solid, slab-faced politburo men from the newspapers, in solid suits, with hair lacquered into silvery central committee quiffs which always rather reminded me of menacing ice-cream cones.

Then suddenly this weird little fairytale about a love test gone wrong, full of the chirpy yet minor cadences of eastern folk and gypsy music, was on everyone’s lips all over the western world.

The song tells the story of a wife trying to check her husband’s loyalty by sending him notes purporting to come from a younger woman, which she signs “Babooshka”. Her fear that her husband no longer sees her as young and attractive are borne out by the barbed lines conveying his thoughts: “Just like his wife before she ‘freezed’ on him / Just like his wife when she was beautiful”. The trap is set when, in her bitterness and paranoia, Babooshka arranges to meet her husband, who is attracted to her alter-ego character because she reminds him of his wife in earlier times – and so she lets her fears ruin her marriage.

 The video featured Bush beside a double bass symbolising the husband, wearing a black bodysuit and a veil in her role as the embittered wife, then changing into an extravagant, myth-like and rather sparse “Russian” costume as Babooshka. It was a kind of mass-culture rethink of some of the themes of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District, the Shostakovich opera which had so annoyed Stalin – the plotting, the secretiveness, the centrality of human relationships instead of politics, and that wily female desperation bringing tragedy in its wake.

But at the time the important thing was that Babooshka’s story, with its dancey, faintly eastern-sounding music and the emotional subtlety that toned down its cruelty, helped blow away the cobwebs from what most people then thought they knew about life on the communist side of Europe. It was proof that Russians weren’t all about Pravda and giant factories and dreary rolled-steel statistics, after all. There were real people out there, too: people who liked their wild love songs in a minor key; people with hearts, sometimes broken; people struggling to escape frustrating situations.

This made Babooshka a helpful soundtrack as the vast political changes began, very soon afterwards, on the eastern side of 1980s Europe – changes that would eventually bring the divided continent back together. The song opened millions of western hearts and minds to the possibility that the easterners they were reading about were no longer anonymous foot soldiers in a cold war that was ending, but rather flesh-and-blood folks like them”.

One of Kate Bush’s most extraordinary and impactful song, I wanted to return to the magnificent Babooshka. Over forty years since it was released, it is still being discovered by new fans. It is a magnificent and hugely compelling song that will be passed down and adored…

THROUGH the ages.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Gwenifer Raymond

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Gwenifer Raymond

___________

AN artist that was recently…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Jinwoo

shortlisted for the Welsh music Prize (the award went to Kelly Lee Owens for Inner Song), Gwenifer Raymond is a phenomenal artist who more people should know about. I will come to that shortlisted album, Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain, soon. It is hard to categorise or define Raymond’s sound. There is Bluegrass at its heart, yet there are so many other elements at play. I don’t think I have recommend an artist in this feature who is instrumental. One is so captivated by Raymond’s compositions that you do not need vocals. Before coming to a review of the album and a live review of one of Gwenifer Raymond’s live shows, there are interviews that give us more details about an amazing composer and musical talent. Guitar Player spoke to her n April about her unique acoustic style:

“Raymond found a local guitar and banjo instructor well versed in the traditional genres she was developing, and with his help began developing her clawhammer technique – a right-hand approach that combines a downward thumb movement for the bass note with an upward two-fingered “claw” that sounds the melody notes on the upper strings.

“I’ve turned my right hand into an autonomous engine at this point,” she says. “I used to watch movies and play the same riff for an hour and a half.” Central to Raymond’s practice regimen were the seminal recordings of country-blues legend Mississippi John Hurt.

“You just slowly get the boom-boom of the bass notes going, and then you introduce the melody notes and eventually learn to do it on the beat, and then the offbeat, and then you put a triplet in, and you can speed it up,” she says. “Once you learn a few tricks, you’ve taught your hand to do all those things and it becomes a very offline process.”

Raymond’s clawhammer drives both her 2015 debut, Sometimes There’s Blood, and its follow-up, 2018’s You Never Were Much of a Dancer.

But on her latest release, the expansive Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain (Tompkins Square), the guitarist applies her technique and favored open tunings of G, D, and C minor to songs that embrace nerve-jangling dissonance and often completely eschew standard folk structures in favor of a more through-composed feel.

Raymond attributes this evolution to her having been commissioned to score the 1907 French silent horror short film The Red Spectre.

“I had to write a seven- or eight-minute-long track that followed the emotional arc of the movie, so it wasn’t like a verse-chorus style thing,” she says. “That just immediately sparked me into wanting to write more compositional songs with movements and more complicated musical arcs in them.”

Given that Raymond’s instrument is her primary means of connecting with her audience, her close attention to tone is not surprising. To the guitarist, communicating with sound is often more effective than doing so with words.

“Talking is hard, as I often discover during interviews,” she says. “In conversation, if you’re trying to get something across but you can’t quite find the words for it, you just make a noise and a gesture. In many ways, that’s what instrumental music does. It’s creating the mood of a concept in a non-representative way.

“And it can do that because the words might not even really exist. Or maybe they exist, but not in the language that you speak, because there are plenty of words in different languages that don’t exist in others. So it’s the nonverbal grunting that you do when you can’t quite get an idea across. But prettier”.

Released in November 2020, Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain is a different sound and vibe compared to her debut. As she explained in this interview, she moved away from the Blues and Folk style to writing more composed songs that are more personal too:

“What’s the title of your latest release, and what does it mean to you?

My latest release was my second album, entitled Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain, which came out in November of last year. Like my first album it was a collection of guitar instrumentals in the ‘primitive’ style. I feel as though this album is leaning more into the left-field than the first – the songs are longer and more ‘compositional’ for lack of a better word, rather than deriving so heavily from the folk and blues traditions. In many ways I think it’s perhaps a more personal album, more reflective of my own upbringing, rather than of the records on my shelves – turning it into something more like ‘Welsh Primitive’.

What was the hardest part about putting this release together, and why?

I’m quite a slow writer, it takes me a long time to fully compose and realise a piece of music. I think this album is more complex than the first; the song structures are more evolving and less based in a traditional verse-chorus structure. I guess I was more ambitious in what I wanted to create, and harsher with myself about what I was writing as I was writing it. Thus, my song writing process – already pretty slow – has gotten even slower. Of course, I think is was absolutely worth the effort.

PHOTO CREDIT: Antonio Olmos/The Observer 

What do enjoy most about producing your own material?

I produced it myself, although there’s obviously not too much production that goes into a raw album of solo instrumental guitar. I had intended to go into the studio to record it but the pandemic hit and my plans had to change, so I ended up recording it myself in my basement flat where I live in Brighton. I’m not sure if I’d call this an effect of ‘production’ exactly, but I do think these circumstances in recording influenced the mood of the album. In my opinion solo instrumental music is innately very intimate, and so I think the effect of recording in isolation – with no other person present at that moment to listen in – has done something to intensify that sense of intimacy between recording and listener.

What do you want the listener to take away from listening to your music?

As I just mentioned, I think that listening to solo instrumental music is often innately quite an intense and intimate experience. I think the strength of this style music is also in its ability get across quite verbally inarticulable expressions of something… I personally wouldn’t want to dictate, or even suggest what a listener should take away from my music. Rather I just want them to find something – anything – in it that reflects or resonates within themselves.

How does a track normally come together? Can you tell us something about the process?

My tracks come together slowly over time. Typically, I happen across a hook upon which I think a song could hang, and then rest of it is more a matter of discovery. It’s kind of an evolutionary process, hence why it can take so long. I wouldn’t say I write the song as opposed to figure out what it’s meant to be. The process is no more sophisticated really than playing an awful lot of guitar whilst sitting and staring out of the window.

What band/artists have influenced you the most since you started this project, and why?

I take a lot of influence from all over the shop to be honest. The most obvious sources would be your key acoustic fingerstyle guitar players: John Fahey, Blind Boy Fuller, Skip James and the like. However, there’s direct references (whether or not they’re obvious to anyone but me) on the latest album to Erik Satie and Master Wilburn Burchette. I don’t really like listing strict influences though, as I tend to be a bit of a digital crate digger and draw my influences a bit more piecemeal from various folk, avant-garde, doom metal, outsider, blues trash and garage rock sources that I stumble upon in internet excavations. That and basically anything put out by Numero Group”.

Aquarium Drunkard asked Raymond how she managed to hone and perfect her guitar style. They also wanted to know whether she hails from a musical family:

“AD: It’s a real practice playing the kind of music you play. How long did it take you to get up to speed?

Gwenifer Raymond: Oh, I don’t know. I’ve been playing guitar since I was a wee one. I’ve been playing guitar for maybe 25 years. It’s practice. You pick up different techniques. At one point I made a concerted effort so that I had a bunch of those Stefan Grossman classic blues tab books, with John Hurt thumb techniques, which I’d seen my teacher doing. So, I started trying to do that on my own, in my own style of playing.

AD: Did you come from a musical family?

Gwenifer Raymond: No. Well, sort of. Neither of my parents are musicians, but they’re both big music fans. We had lots of music around the house. On my mother’s side of the family, some of them were quite musical. Most of them I never met. But my uncles were all adept players. And certainly, my brothers are both musicians.

AD: What can you tell me about Welsh music and how it plays into your work? I don’t know much about it or how it’s distinct from Irish or Scottish or English folk music. What can you tell me about it?

Gwenifer Raymond: Yeah, I don’t listen to too much Welsh folk, beyond, obviously hymns and stuff when I was at school. I have listened to some, though, and it’s almost like a cross between Scottish and Irish. It’s kind of in that category. I think it was more the landscape of Wales with lots of open space and big dark mountains. It was that kind of imagery that plays in my head to the music, rather than folk music”.

I am going to bring in a review for the extraordinary Strange Light Over Garth Mountain. The Guardian were suitably impressed with the Welsh-born, Brighton-based artist’s second album:

“The Garth Mountain marks the south-east of the Welsh mining valleys and the north-west of Cardiff, bronze age burial mounds pocking its peak in strange, crumpled formations. It loomed behind Gwenifer Raymond’s house when she grew up, as the guitarist moved from explorations of punk towards folk, traditional music, the blues and beyond.

Raymond’s 2018 debut, You Never Were Much of a Dancer, set alight the ghost of American primitive pioneer John Fahey (one track was a requiem for him, echoing his own for Mississippi John Hurt). Her fingers tangled around her guitar strings in thrilling, intricate patterns. This time, on an album richly influenced by her birth country, she tries to invent a new style: Welsh primitive, she calls it, infused with folk horror, conjuring up coal trains steaming along the foot of her garden and tall, eerie trees, black against the grey sky.

Those expecting Welsh folk styles will be disappointed. Strange Lights’ closest cousin from Cymru is probably Rhodri Davies’ Telyn Rawn album from earlier this year, where his medieval harp’s horsehair strings seemed to seethe and bleed. Raymond’s references are more about mood, beginning with Incantation’s slow, single drum and shaken bells, then a simple, stark guitar line that weaves a menacing spell. Hell for Certain ups the pace, becoming thick, dense and tangled like a Davy Graham raga. Worn Out Blues bends out its sad melody with sighs of both melancholia and terror.

Gwaed am Gwaed (Blood for Blood) most effectively conjures up an ominous landscape, however, driven by a minor-key folk ballad figure that writhes around and over itself, like a mythical creature slithering out of the shadows. Raymond’s similarly fearsome precision often feels both portentous and perfect”.

To finish off, it is worth quoting from a live review. Raymond is an artist who, on record is fabulous, yet you get something altogether different with her stage performance. The Guardian reviewed a gig of hers in Islington earlier in the year:

“This Welsh musician plays really loud and really fast too, like a vengeful bluegrass musician conjuring up roiling fury, then dropping into languorous eddies, switching between paces with pin-sharp precision. Guitar playing should never be mere gymnastics – “shredding” for shredding’s sake – but Raymond combines awe-inducing technique with grace, depth and emotion.

Hell for Certain, a track from her 2020 album Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain – played in its entirety tonight – sounds even faster and more muscular than its recorded version. (In the video, shot by her mother, Raymond looks wryly uncomfortable in a lace dress, creepy Victoriana and taxidermy arrayed around her.) If anyone made bloody, dramatic Welsh westerns, her instrumentals would be the natural soundtrack. Another 2020 track, Gwaed am Gwaed, translates as “blood for blood”.

The venue’s usual capacity is nearly 900; social distancing has reduced it to 150 tonight. Those of us in the stalls are siloed into pods of two seats with a little table for drinks. But even with smaller numbers, the combination of space and enthusiastic warm bodies means that Raymond’s playing echoes around the space like a living thing, more three-dimensional and organic than its recorded version. Ah, gigs: this is my first one since March 2020.

The folk roots of Raymond’s music lie in faraway Appalachia; the acoustic blues of the American south are well represented too. Her specific field of solo guitar is known as “American primitive” – almost everyone involved now agrees that is a highly problematic name, because it both appropriates and patronises the work of its black inspirations, but a new one hasn’t been minted yet. John Fahey (1939–2001), the father of the genre, coined it, and a steady trickle of acolytes have since taken up this mesmeric, meditative form that, with its open tunings and air of mystery, has as much in common with Indian ragas and drone-based music as it does Anglo-US fingerpicking.

American primitive long remained the preserve of white guys. Great as many of them have been (the late Jack Rose in particular), that is now changing. A recent New York Times article profiled a series of non-white, non-male and non-binary solo guitar players breaking the mould; Raymond is one of the rising talents quoted. “The music can only get more interesting,” she says”.

Go and check out and follow Gwenifer Raymond. She is an award-nominated, hugely acclaimed young artist whose music is so vivid and stunning. Even if you are not a fan of Folk or Bluegrass, that will not be a problem. There is something deeper and different when it comes to an album like Strange Light Over Garth Mountain. If you have not listened to that album, you will definitely want to…

INVESTIGATE it now.

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Follow Gwenifer Raymond

FEATURE: Revisiting… Nilüfer Yanya – Miss Universe

FEATURE:

 

 

Revisiting…

Nilüfer Yanya – Miss Universe

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IN a feature that looks back…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Hollie Fernando

at great albums from the past few years, I wanted to spend some time with Nilüfer Yanya’s debut album, Miss Universe. With her second album, Painless, due next year, it is a good moment to highlight her incredible debut. Yanya grew up in Chelsea, London listening to Turkish and Classical music playing at home. By the age of twelve, she graduated to the guitar. I would advise people to go and buy Miss Universe, as it is an extraordinary album from a true original:

“At 18, Nilüfer – who is of Turkish - Irish - Bajan heritage – uploaded a few demo s to SoundCloud. Though she’s preternaturally shy, her music – which uniquely blends elements of soul and jazz into intimate pop songs with electronic flourishes and a newly expressed grungy guitar sound – isn’t. And it didn’t take long for it to catch people’s attention. She signed with independent New York label ATO, following three EPs on esteemed london indie label Blue Flowers, and earned a place on the BBC Sound of 2018 longlist. She also supported the likes of The xx, Interpol, Broken Social Scene and Mitski on tour. Now, Nilüfer releases her debut album, Miss Universe. Though she recorded much of it in the same remote Cornwall studio she used to jam in as a much younger person, it is bigger and more ambitious than anything she has done before. Angels, with its muted, harmonic riffs, channels ideas “of paranoid thoughts and anxiety” – a theme that runs through the album, not least in its conceptual spoken word interludes which emanate from a fictional health management company WWAY HEALT H TM. “You sign up, and you pay a fee,” explains Nilüfer of the automated messages, which are littered through the album and are narrated by the titular Miss Universe. “They sort out all of your dietary requirements, and then they move onto medication, and then maybe you can get a better organ or something... and then suddenly it starts to get a bit weird. You're giving them more of you and to what end?”.

Released on 22nd March, 2019, Miss Universe is one of the best albums of that year. It is a surprise that you do not hear many of the tracks played. Yanya is a terrific songwriter. We are preparing for her second album. She did put out in the E.P., Feeling Lucky?, last year. Her quality and consistency is impressive indeed! Scooping universal acclaim, Miss Universe is an album that cannot be ignored or played now and then. In their review, CLASH noted the following:

“Singer-songwriter Nilüfer Yanya has come a long way since she started uploading tracks to Soundcloud five years ago. The Londoner has been writing music in her head since she was six, and writing on the guitar since 12, and now at 23 she continues to work with a self-assured autonomy, refusing to let hype or pressure tip her balance. This inner confidence forms the backbone of her debut album: a work tightly-cluttered with ambition and a knack for elevated hooks, a showcase for multi-disciplinary song writing.

An enduring, overriding anxiety about modern life also runs through the record, projecting a dystopian, technological paranoia, but – weirdly – ‘Miss Universe’ is not sinister. In fact, a large chunk of its creative genius is rooted Yanya’s authentic, very human, DIY ethics and attitude, in her vivacious presence and mesmeric exuberance.

Part of this exuberance is an infectious, chirpy passion for pop music. But it’s not pop of the formulaic, fabricated, conveyor belt type; no, it is innovative and striking pop euphoria. The vibrant, pulsing opener ‘In Your Head’ plays with elements of alt-rock and grunge, while eerie, automated messages from WWayHealth – an imagined health management company – cleverly thread core themes through a musically diverse project.

Yanya brings unexpected sonic vibes on ‘Melt’, with its cacophony of brass instruments – inspired by a festival experience – and her Sade-like vocals and jazzy electro-pop atmospherics of ‘Baby Blue’ work intrinsic wonders. On a different end of the emotional spectrum, the soothing facets of ‘Safety Net’ explores the importance of just being, and accepting, oneself, while with concluding track ‘Heavyweight Champion of the Year’ Yanya addresses reaching inner limits, her own ‘metaphorical bar’.

The singer-songwriter has created an astoundingly original piece of work; every track sends shivers down the spine, but hitting different vertebrae - sometimes the impact is measured and controlled, others it’s shocking and bold.  Using her otherworldly, but very human, backdrop Yanya tackles the modern collective experience from an individual perspective - ‘Miss Universe’ is an intimate record full of personal fears and emotions, but these are of wider, universal relevance. They should resonate with us all”.

I like the fact Yanya did not use material from previous E.P.s for her debut. Instead, we get something fresh. Miss Universe is interspersed with interludes featuring messages from something called WWAY HEALTH. These skits and messages are voiced by Yanya. Consisting of short monologues in the form of automated phone messages that intimate at an alienating healthcare bureaucracy. In a way, it is almost like a Hip-Hop album (where interludes are more common). The Guardian picked up on this in their review:

“As with the skits on hip-hop albums, you do wonder how often you’ll want to revisit the interstitial tracks once you have got her point about how all this plays on, and increases, anxiety. Indeed, you don’t really need them to grasp it. No matter how big the choruses get, the music carries a sense of disquiet: you’re never far from, as one track puts it, Monsters Under the Bed. If Heavyweight Champion of the World sounds like a hit single, it’s a troubled one. Even before you get to the lyric, “I’m tired from all these dreams, lack of sleep, I’m still wired”, you notice the way the staccato vocal pulls fretfully at the melody and the nervy urgency with which Yanya hits the strings of her guitar.

Similarly, while you can easily imagine In Your Head becoming an indie disco staple, its depiction of a relationship collapsing is filled with apprehension and vain attempts at second-guessing. The drums boom, the guitar riffs are punchy and appealing, but there’s something wrong with the sound: it lurches when it should flow, feeling as if it’s about to fall to pieces. So does Melt, which comes decorated with the aforementioned smooth 80s saxophones. Its initial calm, small-hours atmosphere gradually unravels and the lyrics reveal themselves to be about the point in an evening where hedonistic indulgence slips into worryingly nihilistic abandon. The result sounds not unlike Arthur Russell’s attempts to make pop music, so wildly off-kilter they went unreleased until years after his death.

It all feels very frayed and personal, as do the intriguing musical juxtapositions. When a guitar that seems to have escaped from an early 2000s R&B track constructed along the lines of Destiny’s Child’s Jumpin’ Jumpin’ unexpectedly appears in the middle of Paralysed, or Heat Rises manages to simultaneously recall the Strokes’ Hard to Explain and Kelis’s collaboration with Andre 3000, Millionaire, it never feels like an artist being clever for the sake of it. It’s more like listening to someone let the music that seeped into them in their teens gush out, albeit in a profoundly altered state. Altered enough, in fact, that it occasionally leaves you scratching your head. You listen to the rhythm track of Paradise – made up of clicks and yelps, augmented by the scrape of Yanya’s fingers down her guitar strings and wonder how she arrived at it. The answer suggested by the rest of her debut album is that she’s a true original”.

If you are not aware of the album and Nilüfer Yanya, then go and check out Miss Universe. It is a great album that marked the (full-length) arrival of one of Britain’s best young artists. The London-based songwriter is someone I have been a fan of for a while. Her debut saw her as Miss Universe. On her second album, we could see her…

GOING stratospheric.

FEATURE: Collectables, Must-Haves…and Everything Else: Would a Kate Bush Shop Succeed and Prove Popular?

FEATURE:

 

 

Collectables, Must-Haves…and Everything Else

IMAGE CREDIT: Anthony Freeman  

Would a Kate Bush Shop Succeed and Prove Popular?

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I have sort of pitched this…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Alan Davidson/Rex/Shutterstock

when I talked about a Kate Bush pop-up shop. That was earlier in the year. There was a Bush pop-up shop that moved online that was erected and housed to promote her Remastered albums in 2018. It was a great endeavour that proved hugely popular. I think that, as she is growing in popularity, there is too much choice online; many people might miss out on something great. What I was thinking, as opposed to the idea I floated last year, having a permanent residence where there would be this shop entirely for her merchandise and records. There are bands and artists who do have shop space dedicated to them. I know ABBA are a group who have that honour. It would not need to be a big space. There are her studio albums and different versions of her albums. For instance, depending on which country they were released in, you get different covers. Her albums are available on vinyl, C.D. and cassette. There are boxsets and books; there are magazines about her, in addition to a range of different merchandise. Whether it could survive donating a lot of the profits to charity, I am not too sure. The 2018 pop-up raised money for Crisis. There was great merchandise, some stuff from her Before the Dawn residency (programmes, I think), and a whole host of goodies.

 IN THIS PHOTO: An item on sale at the Kate Bush pop-up shop that appeared in London in 2018

I think that non-Kate Bush fans would love to spend some time in a shop that is all about her. Not to repeat myself too much, but there could be clothing and general apparel. A whole section with records. These would be vinyl, cassette and C.D. versions of her studio albums, E.P.s and anything else. There are also plenty of books about Bush that have come onto the market the past decade or so. Away from the more accessible and ‘conventional’ items, there are rarities and signed items you can get from auction sites that could be brought in-shop. Costing more, there are plenty of fans that would pay for the privilege. In terms of anything else in the shop, I guess having a screen or screens dotted around could play her interviews and music videos. I have a lot of Kate Bush produce in terms of the albums and some books, though there are things that are on my wish-list that would be awesome to have access to right away. I like websites where you can bid for items. Even so, it can get very expensive and take a while for the goods to arrive (if you are a successful bidder). I know it would be hard to replenish a section of a shop with rarities. You might get different items and signed goods that come in every month. The more fixed stock like books and albums could easily be restocked and kept topped up.

I have said before, when thinking of locations, how Covent Garden seems to be ideal. It is probably less expensive than other parts of London rent-wise, and Bush herself spent time there when training in dance. I associate Covent Garden with Bush taking lessons at the Dance Centre  before her debut album came out. As I wrote recently, Bush did some charity work as a retail assistant in Covent Garden in 1988. I think that it would be able to pull a lot of people in. There are so many cool bits of merchandise and fan-made goods that could be brought to the wider public. Not that it would take business away from these sites. Instead, they would be able to sell goods like a market stall. Information about that website that people could visit afterwards. I look online and can see how many articles are published about Bush. She seems to grow in stature and popularity by the year! Another reason for having a shop in that part of London is that there are not that many record shops in the centre of town. It is quite difficult to get Kate Bush records on the high street in most parts of London. In a wider sense, it is a chance to celebrate and mark the incredible influence and impact of one of the music world’s true treasures. It would not just be me who would get excited about a all-under-one-roof trove for Kate Bush gold. I think that a shop could do…

REALLY well.

FEATURE: Groovelines: Berlin – Take My Breath Away

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

Berlin – Take My Breath Away

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I love a good ‘80s power ballad…

and the one I am featuring in Groovelines is a classic! written by Giorgio Moroder and Tom Whitlock for the 1986 film Top Gun, Take My Breath Away was performed (epically) by the New Wave band, Berlin. No mere one-hit wonder, the song won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song in 1986. It is one of those tracks that everyone knows and has heard. Many might not be aware of the story behind the classic. There are a couple of articles that look at how the song was written and what it was like for Berlin recording it. One of the biggest number one tracks of the 1980s, I think that Take My Breath Away still sounds impactful and emotive. It may have dated a bit, though you can put the track on and feel lifted by it. Stereogum put great number ones under the microscope. They looked about – among other things – how Giorgio Moroder became involved, in addition to how the song differs from some of the more overwrought and forgettable film songs of the 1980s:

“By the time he made “Take My Breath Away,” Moroder had been working in movies for nearly a decade, and he’d effectively left behind the Euro-disco sound that he’d revolutionized with his old collaborator Donna Summer. Moroder had won two Oscars, and he’d co-written and produced #1 hits for two different Bruckheimer-produced films: Blondie’s “Call Me,” from American Gigolo, and Irene Cara’s “Flashdance… What A Feeling,” from Flashdance. Moroder had also produced the Scarface soundtrack, re-scored the silent sci-fi classic Metropolis, and worked with David Bowie on “Cat People (Putting Out The Fire).” He’d recorded an album with the Human League frontman Philip Oakey. He’d made “The NeverEnding Story,” the theme song from the film of the same title, with the Kajagoogoo leader Limahl, and I will love that song for as long as I draw breath on this planet. (“The NeverEnding Story” peaked at #17.) The man was doing well for himself.

The Los Angeles synthpop group Berlin, singer Terri Nunn in particular, were huge admirers of Moroder. Berlin had formed in 1978, when synthpop was still an extremely fringe concern in America. They loved European electronic groups like Kraftwerk; Nunn later told The Guardian, “The band name was our attempt to make people think we were German.” Nunn, a Los Angeles teenager, joined Berlin in 1979, after they’d already been through a couple of singers. (The #1 single in America on the week of Nunn’s birth was Gary U.S. Bonds’ “Quarter To Three.”) Nunn was a part-time actress who’d auditioned for the role of Princess Leia in Star Wars when she was 15. Her audition, with Harrison Ford, is still online. It’s pretty funny! She would not have been a very good Princess Leia!

At least on paper, “Take My Breath Away” does all the things that a big-movie love ballad is supposed to do. Whitlock’s lyrics are absolute romantic gibberish: “Watching every motion in my foolish lover’s game/ On this endless ocean, finally lovers know no shame.” The music is slow and stately, and there’s a late-song key change to pound all the emotions home. But rather than string-soaked grandeur, “Take My Breath Away” keeps things chilly and synthetic. It floats there with an eerie sort of stillness — pretty, but airless.

It’s instructive to compare “Take My Breath Away” to Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes’ “Up Where We Belong,” another love ballad from a blockbuster movie about a hotshot military recruit who falls in love at training camp. “Up Where We Belong” is pure early-’80s schlock, full of tinkly pianos and melodramatic strings. Cocker and Warnes sing it like they’re howling at the heavens. Moroder’s approach on “Take My Breath Away” couldn’t be more different. He pulls everything back, turning the song into a dreamily morose sigh. And in Terri Nunn, he found the right singer to deliver that sigh.

The Top Gun soundtrack, like the movie, was a huge hit, even though most of it is forgettable garbage from bands like Cheap Trick and the Miami Sound Machine. (After “Danger Zone” and “Take My Breath Away” faded from the charts, Loverboy made it to #12 with their own garbage-ass Top Gun ballad “Heaven In Your Eyes.”) The next year, Moroder and Whitlock won the Best Original Song Oscar for “Take My Breath Away,” beating out Peter Cetera’s “Glory Of Love” and the An American Tail banger “Somewhere Out There” in the process. (“Somewhere Out There,” as performed by Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram, peaked at #2. Their version is an 8, though the version that Fievel sings in the movie would probably be a 10.) Moroder accepted his third Oscar from Bernadette Peters, and he seemed overcome. “This I really like,” he said. Later on, Moroder said that “Take My Breath Away” was his favorite song that he’d made — a crazy thing to hear from the man partially responsible for “I Feel Love”.

My favourite aspect of Take My Breath Away is the vocal performance from Terri Nunn. She brings so much electricity and passion to the words! In November last year, The Guardian interviewed her and Giorgio Moroder about the creation of Take My Breath Away:

“Terri Nunn, singer

Before I was in Berlin I auditioned for the part of Princes Leia in Star Wars. I was 15 but looked 12. Harrison Ford was over 30 but looked 19 or 20. We sat in deckchairs to say our lines. George Lucas, bless him, sent me a letter thanking me and saying: “We chose Carrie Fisher, but we’d like to help you.” He introduced me to Steven Spielberg and all these guys. I was offered the part of Lucy Ewing in Dallas, but the seven-year contract scared me because I really wanted to do music. My mother told me to go with my heart, but my agent was so annoyed with me for turning down Dallas that he dropped me. A year later, I met John Crawford [bass/vocals] and joined Berlin.

People laughed at us at first because power-pop or arena rock were popular and we were into electronic music – Kraftwerk and Ultravox. The band name was our attempt to make people think we were German.

We loved what Giorgio Moroder was doing and begged to work with him, but he was huge: he had worked with David Bowie, Donna Summer, Blondie and on Flashdance. We could eventually afford him for just one song, No More Words. While we were working with him, he got the contract for Top Gun and wrote Take My Breath Away. He’d tried other singers on it but the film’s producers had turned them all down, so Giorgio suggested us. We hadn’t had big hits, but he could be very convincing and told them: “Oh, they’ll be huge.”

We went into Giorgio’s vast studio complex in North Hollywood, where he was doing three or four projects simultaneously with an assistant producer in every room. He would blow in and say: “I don’t like the horns. Take them out. We’ll do more later. OK, bye.” Then he’d return later: “Oh I love it! Do more harmonies!”

He added horns and guitars and made everything more lush. He kept bringing me back to simplify the vocal, saying: “People need to want to sing along.” In acting, I’d learned a lot about channelling emotion. I was alone. I’d been so busy with the band I’d not had a relationship for four years. So I sang it from a feeling of sadness and longing, and maybe that’s what resonated. At first, nothing happened and our manager said: “Terri, if this goes Top 10, I’ll get a mohawk.” But the record company kept pushing and it went to No 1 around the world, so MTV came and filmed our manager getting a mohawk”.

Having turned thirty-five earlier in the year, Berlin’s sweeping and anthemic Take My Breath Away is a song that is the highlight from Top Gun’s soundtrack. With lyrics from Tom Whitlock and production/composition from Giorgio Moroder, it has been good exploring the history and story of one of the biggest songs from the 1980s. After all of these years, Take My Breath Away remains…

A singalong classic.

FEATURE: Vinyl Corner: Spoon - Kill the Moonlight

FEATURE:

 

 

Vinyl Corner

Spoon - Kill the Moonlight

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BECAUSE the American Rock band…

Spoon are releasing the new album, Lucifer on the Sofa, next year, I wanted to look back at one of their classic albums for Vinyl Corner. Released in 2002, Kill the Moonlight is quite a stark and bleak listen. It has plenty of beauty to be found. A change of sound for Spoon, it features instruments like tambourines and pianos in a more stripped production. I would urge people to get it on vinyl. As I do with all albums I include, I want to showcase a couple of reviews. Whereas 2001’s Girls Can’t Tell was a departure from 1998’s A Series of Sneaks, fans were offered something new on Kill the Moonlight. I have heard Spoon’s music before, though I did not hear Kill the Moonlight until fairly recently. It is an album that one should grab on vinyl and experience something that was hugely acclaimed upon its release. In their review of one of 2002’s best albums, this is what AllMusic had to say:

“Coming just a year-and-a-half after their triumphant return Girls Can Tell, Kill the Moonlight isn't so much a step backward as a step sideways, almost like a breather after the emotional and musical intensity of their previous album. It isn't surprising, really, that the group would choose to follow such a cathartic album as Girls Can Tell with a collection of tougher, leaner, and meaner songs like "All the Pretty Girls Go to the City," which sounds like the inverse of Girls' "Everything Hits at Once"; "The Way We Get By," a prime example of Spoon's smart, nervy rock; or the spare, spooky pop of "Paper Tiger" and "Someone Something."

It is somewhat surprising, however, that Spoon managed to pare down their sound even more on Kill the Moonlight -- tracks such as "Small Stakes" and "Something to Look Forward To" are so stripped-down and sculpted that they're practically aerodynamic; the only problem is that they don't always take off from there. Still, even the album's sparest moments feature Spoon's much-heralded knack with catchy melodies and hooks, even if songs such as "Don't Let It Get You Down" would be even more memorable with a slightly more fleshed-out approach. Hints of this appear on the songs with unique production twists, such as "Stay Don't Go," which sports a human beatbox rhythm; on the distant backing vocals and baritone saxes of "You Gotta Feel It"; and on the album-closer, "Vittorio E.," an undulating, vaguely psychedelic ballad that finally gives the band's playing and songwriting the full treatment they deserve. Though the album's brittle immediacy is far from a disappointment, and the quick turnaround between Kill the Moonlight and their previous one is a treat for Spoon fans, one can't help but notice that this album just isn't as revelatory as Girls Can Tell. But even if the artistic course Spoon seems to be plotting is two steps forward, one step back, it's more than rewarding enough to enjoy every stop on the journey”.

With the incredible vocals of Britt Daniel giving every song such importance and weight, I have been listening back to Kill the Moonlight quite a bit. If you have not heard the album before, it is a lot more rewarding than it is challenging. I feel reviews of Kill the Moonlight give you a good impression of what makes the album so stunning and celebrated. Many critics have placed it in their list of the best albums of the ‘00s. This is Pitchfork’s take on Kill the Moonlight:

“But any hack band can create space, right? Maybe. But using it is the tricky part. Like some of the best minimalists in music, Spoon use the null and void to create tension which bolsters and sets apart every nuance of the music-- every handclap, every reverberating crash, every beep from the synthesizer. "Paper Tiger," in particular, effortlessly floats into of the realm of the hyper-real; there's nearly more silence than music. Spoon has always struck me as a band that, no matter how good the rest of their album was, could always be relied upon to produce at least one or two songs every album that would make my jaw drop ("Car Radio," "Everything Hits at Once," "Lines in the Suit"). And while Moonlight has far more than its fair share of stunners, "Paper Tiger" blows them all away. Daniel distantly croon-growls, "I'll never hold you back/ And I won't force my will/ 'I will no longer do the Devil's wishes'/ Somethin' I read on a dollar bill," over reverse-playback beats, solitary piano chords, and drumsticks; nothing else. It's an effect of singular elegance and power.

The rest of the album is largely more upbeat, fortunately, or it could have slipped into a fugue. A little of the guitar braggadocio that netted the band so many past comparisons to the Pixies, and older acts like Wire, is showcased on "Jonathon Fisk." The riffs hit hard and fast, and some of the horns Bowie once used on Hunky Dory drop by to lighten things up. Later, the rock piano stylings of Jerry Lee Lewis could shed a tear for catapulting the bittersweet "Someone Something" into the "best of" section of Spoon's catalog. Bright-eyed optimism and the faintest hint of the uncertainty of expectation are conveyed through the staccato piano, and the vocals build and carry it off to a beautiful conclusion. Also of note: "Something to Look Forward To" may be the best fusion of older and newer Spoon to date, and "Stay Don't Go" will likely be your only chance to experience a sample of Britt beat-boxing. Truly surreal.

Kill the Moonlight is a hailstorm of complex emotional underpinnings; sometimes vibrant, sometimes morose, but usually in a frighteningly anxious limbo. "Vittorio E" closes shop and turns eyes toward the future with a 3\xBD-minute synopsis of the album's emotional heft. Choir-like harmonies fade in from the depths behind the main vocal, and a simple, sweet piano refrain lifts it away from any of the sadness or trouble left behind it. It never looks back.

Indeed, Spoon's latest is their magnum opus to date; it takes a scalpel to the highlight reel of their career, cutting and pasting a 35-minute tour de force that ends too soon. And yet, despite all the elements Spoon has toyed with over the years, it doesn't sound distinctly like any of them. In fact, this all feels like a decidedly different Spoon, like the real start of the next phase for which the merely likable Girls Can Tell was only a bridge. So be prepared. The difference is in the distance”.

I will end here. Containing twelve tracks that all seem different, vital and utterly engrossing, Kill the Moonlight is an album that is best appreciated on vinyl. With Lucifer on the Sofa due next year, it was a good time to look back at their fourth L.P. Though some fans might disagree, I think that Kill the Moonlight is…

THEIR best album to date.

FEATURE: Kate Bush’s How to Be Invisible at Three: The Songs with the Best Lyrics on Nine of Her Studio Albums

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush’s How to Be Invisible at Three

The Songs with the Best Lyrics on Nine of Her Studio Albums

___________

I wanted to mark the anniversary…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during filming for The Line, The Cross and the Curve in 1993/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

of Kate Bush’s How to Be Invisible. On Monday (6th December), her first lyrics book turns three. For any new convert or big Kate Bush fan, I think that the book is a great gift idea. I would recommend people go and buy it:

“A landmark publishing event, How to be Invisible is the first ever published collection of Bush’s lyrics, selected by the artist and brought together in a beautiful clothbound gift edition.

Ivor Novello winner Kate Bush has long forged her love of literature with music. From Emily Brontë through to James Joyce, Bush has consistently referenced our literary heritage, combined with her own profound understanding of language and musical form.

How to Be Invisible: Selected Lyrics draws from her superlative, 40-year career in music. Chosen and arranged by Kate Bush herself, this very special, cloth-bound volume will be the first published collection of her work.

Accompanying the collection is an expansive introduction from Cloud Atlas author David Mitchell. ‘For millions around the world Kate is way more than another singer-songwriter: she is a creator of musical companions that travel with you through life,’ he said. ‘One paradox about her is that while her lyrics are avowedly idiosyncratic, those same lyrics evoke emotions and sensations that feel universal”.

To mark three years since the release of Kate Bush’s great lyrics book, I wanted to highlight a song from each of her nine studio albums (I am not including 2011’s Director’s Cut) that boasts especially strong lyrics. Of course, one should not be so reductive but, to demonstrate how unique and brilliant Kate Bush is as a lyricist (in addition to her immense compositional, production and vocal chops!), there is always that golden song on each L.P. that blows you away with its imagery – choosing it is hard, yet it allows me opportunity to spotlight her special poetry. Another great book that illustrates Bush’s words and songs is Finding Kate. It is a magnificent book from Michael Byrne and Marius Herbert that sets some of Bush’s best lines and greatest lyrics to these beautiful illustrations. The song selections are great, and we get a mix of the better-known songs and the deeper cuts that offer up their brilliance in the book. A happy third anniversary to Kate Bush’s How to Be Invisible. A magnificent, illuminating, striking, wonderful and quote-worthy book, it is one that should be…

IN every Kate Bush fan’s home for Christmas.

__________________

The Kick Inside – The Man with the Child in His Eyes

Album Release Date: 17th February, 1978

U.K. Single Release Date: 26th May, 1978

Producer: Andrew Powell

The Second-Best Song for Lyrics: Wuthering Heights

The Lyrics:

“("He's here! He's here!

He's here! He's here!")

I hear him, before I go to sleep

And focus on the day that's been.

I realize he's there,

When I turn the light off and turn over.

Nobody knows about my man.

They think he's lost on some horizon.

And suddenly I find myself

Listening to a man I've never known before,

Telling me about the sea,

All his love, 'til eternity.

Ooh, he's here again,

The man with the child in his eyes.

Ooh, he's here again,

The man with the child in his eyes.

He's very understanding,

And he's so aware of all my situations.

And when I stay up late,

He's always waiting, but I feel him hesitate.

Oh, I'm so worried about my love.

They say, "No, no, it won't last forever."

And here I am again, my girl,

Wondering what on Earth I'm doing here.

Maybe he doesn't love me.

I just took a trip on my love for him.

Ooh, he's here again,

The man with the child in his eyes.

Ooh, he's here again,

The man with the child in his eyes”

Lionheart – Symphony in Blue

Album Release Date: 13th November, 1978

Producer: Andrew Powell (assisted by Kate Bush)

The Second-Best Song for Lyrics: Wow

The Lyrics:

“I spent a lot of my time looking at blue,

The color of my room and my mood:

Blue on the walls, blue out of my mouth;

The sort of blue between clouds, when the sun comes out,

The sort of blue in those eyes you get hung up about.

When that feeling of meaninglessness sets in,

Go blowing my mind on God:

The light in the dark, with the neon arms,

The meek He seeks, the beast He calms,

The head of the good soul department.

I see myself suddenly

On the piano, as a melody.

My terrible fear of dying

No longer plays with me,

for now I know that I'm needed

For the symphony.

I associate love with red,

The colour of my heart when she's dead;

Red in my mind when the jealousy flies,

Red in my eyes from emotional ties,

Manipulation, the danger signs.

The more I think about sex, the better it gets.

Here we have a purpose in life:

Good for the blood circulation,

Good for releasing the tension,

The root of our reincarnations.

I see myself suddenly

On the piano, as a melody.

My terrible fear of dying

No longer plays with me,

for now I know that I'm needed

For the symphony.

I spent a lot of my time looking at blue

No wonder that I blue it!”

Never for Ever – The Wedding List

Album Release Date: 7th September, 1980

Producers: Kate Bush/Jon Kelly

The Second-Best Song for Lyrics: Breathing

The Lyrics:

“No, I'll never give the hunt up

And I won't muck it up

Somehow this is it, I knew

Maybe fate wants you dead, too

We've come together in the very same room

And I'm coming for you

Do you think I'd ever let you

Get away with it, huh?

He swooned in warm maroon

There's gas in your barrel, and I'm flooded with Doom

You've made a wake of our honeymoon

And I'm coming for you"

"All of the headlines said 'Passion Crime"

'Newly weds Groom Shot Dead

'Mystery Man.' God help the bride

She's a widow, all in red

With his red still wet. She said--"

I'll put him on the wedding list

I'll put him on the wedding list

I'll get him and I will not miss

Now, as I'm coming for you

All I see is Rudi

I die with him, again and again

And I'll feel good in my revenge

I'm gonna fill your head with lead

And I'm coming for you

And when it's all over you'll roll over

The butt of my gun:

One in your belly, and one for Rudi

You got what you gave by the heel of my bootie

Bang-bang--Out! like an old cherootie

I'm coming for you

"All of the headlines said 'Passion Crime:

'Newly weds Groom Shot Dead

'Mystery Man.' God help the bride

She's a widow, all in red

With his red still wet. She said--"

She sure got him on the wedding list

I'll got him on the wedding list

I'll got him and I will not miss

I'll put him on the wedding list

"And after she shot the guy

She committed suicide

I'm coming, Rudi

"And later, when they analysed

They found a little one inside.

"It must have been Rudi's child"

I shot, I shot, I shot him honey

"Never mind, she got the guy"

He hit the ground, Rudi

"An eye for an eye"

Ashes to ashes...

"Eye for an eye"

I hit him, hit him

Rudi!, Rudi

I'm coming coming coming honey

"Eye for an eye"

Rudi”

The Dreaming – Houdini

Album Release Date: 13th September, 1982

Producer: Kate Bush

The Second-Best Song for Lyrics: Pull Out the Pin

The Lyrics:

“I wait at the table,

And hold hands with weeping strangers

Wait for you to join the group

The tambourine jingle-jangles

The medium roams and rambles

Not taken in, I break the circle

I want this man

To go away now

With a kiss

I'd pass the key

And feel your tongue

Teasing and receiving.

With your spit

Still on my lip

You hit the water

Him and I in the room

To prove you are with us too

He's using code that only you and I know

This is no trick of his

This is your magic

I'd catch the cues

Watching you

Hoping you'd do something wrong

Everybody thinks you'll never make it

But every time you escape

'Rosabel believe,

Not even eternity

Can hold Houdini!'

"Rosabel, believe!"

Through the glass

I'd watch you breathe

("Not even eternity")

Bound and drowned

And paler than you've ever been

("will hold Houdini!")

With your life

The only thing in my mind

We pull you from the water

You ("Hou-di-ni")

And I and Rosabel believe”

Hounds of Love - And Dream of Sheep

Album Release Date: 16th September, 1985

Producer: Kate Bush

The Second-Best Song for Lyrics: Cloudbusting

The Lyrics:

“Little light shining

Little light will guide them to me

My face is all lit up

My face is all lit up

If they find me racing white horses

They'll not take me for a buoy

Let me be weak, let me sleep and dream of sheep

Oh I'll wake up to any sound of engines

Every gull a seeking craft

I can't keep my eyes open

Wish I had my radio

I'd tune into some friendly voices

Talking 'bout stupid things

I can't be left to my imagination

Let me be weak, let me sleep and dream of sheep

Ooh, their breath is warm

And they smell like sleep

And they say they take me home

Like poppies, heavy with seed

They take me deeper and deeper”

The Sensual World – This Woman’s Work

Album Release Date: 16th October, 1989

U.K. Single Release Date: 20th November, 1989

Producer: Kate Bush

The Second-Best Song for Lyrics: Deeper Understanding

The Lyrics:

“Pray God you can cope.

I stand outside this woman's work,

This woman's world.

Ooh, it's hard on the man,

Now his part is over.

Now starts the craft of the father.

I know you have a little life in you yet.

I know you have a lot of strength left.

I know you have a little life in you yet.

I know you have a lot of strength left.

I should be crying, but I just can't let it show.

I should be hoping, but I can't stop thinking

Of all the things I should've said,

That I never said.

All the things we should've done,

That we never did.

All the things I should've given,

But I didn't.

Oh, darling, make it go,

Make it go away.

Give me these moments back.

Give them back to me.

Give me that little kiss.

Give me your hand.

(I know you have a little life in you yet.

I know you have a lot of strength left.

I know you have a little life in you yet.

I know you have a lot of strength left.)

I should be crying, but I just can't let it show.

I should be hoping, but I can't stop thinking

Of all the things we should've said,

That were never said.

All the things we should've done,

That we never did.

All the things that you needed from me.

All the things that you wanted for me.

All the things that I should've given,

But I didn't.

Oh, darling, make it go away.

Just make it go away now”

The Red Shoes – Moments of Pleasure

Album Release Date: 2nd November, 1993

U.K. Single Release Date: 15th November, 1993

Producer: Kate Bush

The Second-Best Song for Lyrics: Lily

The Lyrics:

“Some moments that I've had

Some moments of pleasure

I think about us lying

Lying on a beach somewhere

I think about us diving

Diving off a rock, into another moment

The case of George the Wipe

Oh God, I can't stop laughing

This sense of humour of mine

It isn't funny at all

Oh, but we sit up all night

Talking about it

Just being alive

It can really hurt

And these moments given

Are a gift from time

On a balcony in New York

It's just started to snow

He meets us at the lift

Like Douglas Fairbanks

Waving his walking stick

But he isn't well at all

The buildings of New York

Look just like mountains through the snow

Just being alive

It can really hurt

And these moments given

Are a gift from time

Just let us try

To give these moments back

To those we love

To those who will survive

And I can hear my mother saying

"Every old sock meets an old shoe"

Ain't that a great saying?

"Every old sock meets an old shoe"

Here come the Hills of Time

Hey there Maureen

Hey there Bubba

Dancing down the aisle of a plane

'S Murph, playing his guitar refrain

Hey there Teddy

Spinning in the chair at Abbey Road

Hey there Michael

Do you really love me?

Hey there Bill

Could you turn the lights up?”

Aerial - Mrs. Bartolozzi

Album Release Date: 7th November, 2005

Producer: Kate Bush

The Second-Best Song for Lyrics: How to Be Invisible

The Lyrics:

“I remember it was that Wednesday

Oh when it rained and it rained

They traipsed mud all over the house

It took hours and hours to scrub it out

All over the hall carpet

I took my mop and bucket

And I cleaned and I cleaned

The kitchen floor

Until it sparkled

Then I took my laundry basket

And put the linen all in it

And everything I could fit in it

And all our dirty clothes that hadn't gone into the wash

And all your shirts and jeans and things

And put them in the new washing machine

Washing machine

Washing machine

I watched them go 'round and 'round

My blouse wrapping itself in your trousers

Oh the waves are going out

My skirt floating up around my waist

As I wade out into the surf

Oh and the waves are coming in

Oh and the waves are going out

Oh and you're standing right behind me

Little fish swim between my legs

Oh and the waves are coming in

Oh and the waves are going out

Oh and the waves are coming in

Out of the corner of my eye

I think I see you standing outside

But it's just your shirt

Hanging on the washing line

Waving its arm as the wind blows by

And it looks so alive

Nice and white

Just like its climbed right out

Of my washing machine

Washing machine

Washing machine

Slooshy sloshy slooshy sloshy

Get that dirty shirty clean

Slooshy sloshy slooshy sloshy

Make those cuffs and collars gleam

Everything clean and shiny

Washing machine

Washing machine

Washing machine”

50 Words for Snow - Misty

Release Date: 21st November, 2011

Producer: Kate Bush

The Second-Best Song for Lyrics: 50 Words for Snow

The Lyrics:

“Roll his body.

Give him eyes.

Make him smile for me,

Give him life.

My hand is bleeding, I run back inside.

I turn off the light,

Switch on a starry night.

My window flies open.

My bedroom fills with falling snow,

Should be a dream but I'm not sleepy.

I see his snowy white face but I'm not afraid.

He lies down beside me.

So cold next to me.

I can feel him melting in my hand.

Melting, in my hand.

He won't speak to me.

His crooked mouth is full of dead leaves.

Full of dead leaves, bits of twisted branches and frozen garden,

crushed and stolen grasses from slumbering lawn.

He is dissolving, dissolving before me and dawn will come soon.

What kind of spirit is this?

Our one and only tryst.

His breath all misty,

And when I kiss his ice-cream lips

And his creamy skin,

His snowy white arms surround me.

So cold next to me.

I can feel him melting in my hand.

Melting, melting, in my hand.

Sunday morning.

I can't find him.

The sheets are soaking

And on my pillow:

Dead leaves, bits of twisted branches and frozen garden,

crushed and stolen grasses from slumbering lawn.

I can't find him - Misty

Oh please can you help me?

He must be somewhere.

Open window closing,

Oh but wait, it's still snowing.

If you're out there,

I'm coming out on the ledge.

I'm going out on the ledge”

FEATURE: A Buyer’s Guide: Part Eighty-Three: Brandy

FEATURE:

 

 

A Buyer’s Guide

 Part Eighty-Three: Brandy

___________

THERE are a couple of exceptions…

I am making for this A Buyer’s Guide. I may well include one of her treasured peers, Monica, in the coming weeks. I wanted to highlight Brandy, as her albums are not given as much respect and play as they deserve. She is one of the most important R&B artists of the past few decades. I normally insist that there is a minimum of eight album’s to an artist/band’s name before I consider them. Brandy has released seven. There is also not a book related to her that I could find. That said, I really feel there are albums of her that are underrated, in addition to a few real classics. I am going to recommend her four best albums, one that is underrated, in addition to her latest studio album – leaving only one of her albums that I will not cover. Before getting to the Brandy albums that are well worth investigating, I want to bring in some biography. AllMusic have us covered when it comes to the Mississippi-born icon:

“Brandy is among the few artists to achieve mainstream success as a teenager and make smooth artistic transitions across a multi-decade career. The singer and actor emerged during the post-new jack swing era like the kid sister of Mary J. Blige or TLC, specializing in pop-oriented R&B epitomized by her first two singles, "I Wanna Be Down" and "Baby," both Top Ten crossover hits that made her debut, Brandy (1994), a multi-platinum smash. The title role on the popular sitcom Moesha, a chart-topping and Grammy-winning duet with Monica ("The Boy Is Mine," the longest-running number one female duet in Billboard chart history), and the multi-platinum follow-up Never Say Never (1998) all reaffirmed Brandy's broad appeal through the end of the '90s. While she could have continued to crank out safe contemporary R&B as her acting career took precedence, she made the most out of her subsequent studio time, highlighted by Full Moon (2002) and Afrodisiac (2004), progressive stylistic hybrids that earned her consecutive Grammy nominations for Best Contemporary R&B Album. Since the mid-2000s, Brandy has recorded less often, with Human (2008) and Two Eleven (2012) maintaining her unbroken streak of Top Ten R&B/hip-hop albums. Amid constant work onscreen and on-stage, Brandy's musical output during the second half of the 2010s was limited to a handful of singles and featured appearances, but she issued her seventh album, B7 (2020), early the next decade.

Brandy Norwood was born in McComb, Mississippi, and began singing in church at age two. When she was four, her father was hired as music director at a church in Carson, California, and after a few years, she decided to pursue a professional singing career, inspired by Whitney Houston. With the help of her family, she began hunting for a record contract, and in 1992 began singing backup for the young R&B group Immature. Brandy enrolled in the Hollywood High Performing Arts Center and launched an acting career, appearing in films like Arachnophobia and Demolition Man. At the age of 14, she landed a record deal with a performance at an Atlantic Records talent showcase. Around the same time, she won a supporting role on the short-lived ABC sitcom Thea. In September 1994, Brandy released her self-titled debut album, which immediately produced Billboard Hot 100 Top Ten smashes in "I Wanna Be Down" and "Baby," both of which hit number one on the R&B/hip-hop chart; "Brokenhearted" and "Best Friend" went on to smaller successes. Brandy was certified quadruple platinum within two years.

In 1996, Brandy scored her biggest hit yet with "Sittin' Up in My Room," recorded for the Waiting to Exhale soundtrack; it hit number two pop and number one R&B/hip-hop. Early that year, she also debuted on UPN as the star of Moesha, for which she took a lengthy recording hiatus. Apart from "Sittin' Up in My Room," her only real activity over the next couple of years was the Set It Off soundtrack single "Missing You," on which she teamed with Chaka Khan, Gladys Knight, and Tamia. In 1997, she branched out by taking the title role in Disney's made-for-TV version of Cinderella, appearing alongside her idol Whitney Houston; the film's star power and integrated cast made it a significant ratings success. Finally, Brandy set about recording her second album. Never Say Never was released in June 1998, and its first single, the Monica duet "The Boy Is Mine," was a mammoth hit, topping the Hot 100 for a staggering 13 weeks. In its wake, "Top of the World" (featuring guest rapper Mase) and "Have You Ever?" were both substantial hits as well, with the latter becoming Brandy's first solo number one Hot 100 hit. Never Say Never spun off three additional singles, including the Top 20 pop hit "Almost Doesn't Count," on its way to sales of over five million copies. "The Boy Is Mine" subsequently won a Grammy for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.

Meanwhile, Brandy's acting career continued to blossom. In 1998, she landed her first major theatrical film role in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, and the following year, she appeared in another TV movie, Double Trouble, with Diana Ross. She concentrated mostly on Moesha until the show was canceled in the spring of 2001. The same year, she voiced a character in the animated film Osmosis Jones. In February 2002, Brandy released her third album, Full Moon, which entered the Billboard 200 chart at number two, spun off an immediate hit in "What About Us?" -- her seventh Top Ten pop single -- and was subsequently nominated for a Grammy in the category of Best Contemporary R&B Album. That summer, Brandy gave birth to her first child. Her pregnancy was the subject of an MTV documentary series, Brandy: Special Delivery.

The singer's fourth album, Afrodisiac, was released in June 2004. Its lead single, "Talk About Our Love," was produced by Kanye West and peaked at number 36 on the Hot 100. Although it too received a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Album, Afrodisiac was Brandy's last recording for Atlantic. Signed to Epic, she returned in December 2008 with Human, an adult contemporary-leaning set that entered the Billboard 200 at number 15.

A couple years later, she starred alongside her brother and parents in the reality television series Brandy & Ray J: A Family Business, with a soundtrack of sorts following in 2011. She teamed up with Monica again in 2012 for the single "It All Belongs to Me" (which appeared on Monica's New Life), and months later issued the collaboration-heavy Two Eleven, which topped the R&B/hip-hop chart and entered the Billboard 200 at number three. The Chris Brown collaboration "Put It Down" became Brandy's tenth Top Ten R&B/hip-hop single as a headliner.

For the rest of the 2010s, Brandy devoted most of her time to acting, highlighted by roles on the series The Game, Zoe After Ever, and Star, as well as the lead role in the Broadway production of Chicago. Her limited recordings during these years included the bluesy belters "Beggin & Pleadin" (2016) and "Freedom Rings" (2019), a featured appearance on August Greene's cover of Sounds of Blackness' "Optimistic," and a duet with Daniel Caesar, "Love Again," which earned a Grammy nomination for Best R&B Performance. After she built more anticipation with the Chance the Rapper collaboration "Baby Mama," B7, her first album in eight years, arrived in 2020. The Disney Princess anthem "Starting Now" appeared the following year”.

Last year’s B7 was one of Brandy’s best albums. I hope that we get many more albums from her because, since 1994, she has been producing some of the very best music around. If you are new to Brandy’s music and brilliance, then the guide below should, I hope, point you in the…

RIGHT direction.

_________________

The Four Essential Albums

 

Brandy

Release Date: 27th September, 1994

Label: Atlantic

Producers: Keith Crouch/Kenneth Crouch/Arvel McClinton/Somethin' for the People/Damon Thomas

Standout Tracks: Baby/Best Friend/Brokenhearted

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=57718&ev=mb

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/2yHJoGH0mIqYVAHUFKJcZ6?si=DnSIohSsSrGXtFfo7mnZzQ

Review:

“This teenage R&B singer hit the Top Ten late in 1994 with "I Wanna Be Down," a representative track from her solid debut album. Brandy knows her way around a hip-hop beat, layering tender-tough vocals over spare arrangements like a lower-key Janet Jackson or a more stripped-down Mary J. Blige. Good songs and crisp production make Brandy a moody, moving success” – AllMusic

Choice Cut: I Wanna Be Down

Never Say Never

Release Date: 9th June, 1998

Label: Atlantic

Producers: Brandy Norwood/Rodney Jerkins/Dallas Austin/David Foster/Fred Jerkins III/Brad Gilderman/Harvey Mason, Jr./Marc Nelson/Guy Roche

Standout Tracks: Angel in Disguise/Almost Doesn't Count/Never Say Never

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=57731&ev=mb

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/1Co6e9ag1gRKcWdG7xKcCi?si=MAsYX1aRQImL9h6m6Q98Jw

Review:

“Brandy is an oft-repeated name in dance music and r&b retrospectives, but rarely is her music put to the test beyond a small handful of well-known singles (and of course, countless samples). Today, I challenge you to put her music to the test. If you're saying to yourself, nice try, I'll never appreciate such a cheesy album or genre, here's what I say to you: Never Say Never.

Never Say Never captures the energy of an artist fresh off of a successful debut album, ready to let go and make music true to her heart and vision. Like many old skool r&b releases, a lopsided tracklist detracts from the record's immediacy looking back...but that's not the point! The serendipitous pairing of Brandy and producer Darkchild (aka Rodney Jerkins) resulted in a distinct atmosphere and style that made waves in the pop music industry and beyond. It doesn't lose sight of what r&b had to offer during the '90s, but is simultaneously forward-thinking, striking a balance between camp and soul that remains exceptional over twenty years later.

Darkchild would go on to be involved with most of Brandy's later albums, but the dream team wasn't able to sustain their creative momentum. As the princess of r&b gradually faded from the limelight, her voice and spirit continued to be sampled by subsequent generations, ultimately becoming a lasting ethos, and Never Say Never is an incredible display of what made Brandy so impactful. While it may not have the immediacy or consistency of other releases in r&b, patient listening reveals countless treasures. Are you up for the challenge?” – Sputnikmusic

Choice Cut: The Boy Is Mine (duet with Monica)

Afrodisiac

Release Date: 25th June, 2004

Label: Atlantic

Producers: Brandy Norwood/Warryn ‘Baby Dubb’ Campbell/Big Chuck/Theron Feemster/Walter Millsap III/Organized Noise/Timbaland/Kanye West

Standout Tracks: Who Is She 2 U/Talk About Our Love (featuring Kanye West)/Turn It Up

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=57748&ev=mb

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/0TBkOhBNDAooz45OxNZSle?si=UnUetVaqSVeTrS9B0K202w  

Review:

“Now over a decade into her music career, Brandy is nothing if not consistent. Afrodisiac nevertheless involves a number of personal and creative changes. Since the making of 2002's Full Moon, she became a mother, split with her husband, picked up new manager Benny "The Actual Fresh Prince" Medina, and swapped out primary producer Rodney Jerkins in favor of Timbaland (not necessarily in that order). And her image has drifted away from the one she cast when she was just starting out; this hasn't transpired without some controversy. It's to be expected, but one still has to wonder what all the fuss is about. First, who doesn't change between the ages of 15 and 25? Second, the development isn't quite as drastic as Janet Jackson's jump from "Escapade" to "Throb," though there's a significant parallel there -- Brandy's provocative pose on the cover of Vibe, which hit stands just before this album, recalls Janet's cupped-breast appearance on the cover of Rolling Stone in 1993. Though the surroundings and circumstances may be new to artist and fans alike, the effectiveness has not suffered for it: Afrodisiac is Brandy's fourth consecutive durable showing, fluffed out with a few innocuous -- if still very listenable -- filler moments, but it is stocked with a number of spectacular -- and emotionally resonant -- singles that wind up making for her most accomplished set yet. To regrettably drag Janet back into this, lead single "Talk About Our Love" is even more exceptional than another recent Kanye West-produced track, Janet's own "I Want You," and is a career highlight for both producer and vocalist. Timbaland provides 60 percent of the tracks; though he has confessed to being worn out by the process of music lately, you wouldn't know it from his inspired work. Whether or not Brandy penned the lyrics, her experiences have clearly engendered a new depth to her songs. Her voice remains a treat to hear, and on a couple tracks she wears a slightly worn scratchiness surprisingly well. Closing track "Should I Go" is about as honest and searching as anyone gets these days, and while it's also noteworthy for allowing Brandy and Timbaland to pay tribute to shared love Coldplay, it's the music industry that's being contemplated, not a romantic relationship. Whatever Brandy decides to do, consider her mark made” – AllMusic

Choice Cut: Afrodisiac

Two Eleven

Release Date: 12th October, 2012

Labels: Chameleon/RCA

Producers: Bangladesh/Bink/The Bizness/Warryn Campbell/Mike City/Danja/Earl & E./Sean Garrett/Danny Morris/Jim Jonsin/Rico Love/Pierre Medor/Harmony ‘H-Money’ Samuels/Switch/Mike Will Made It/Mario Winans

Standout Tracks: No Such Thing as Too Late/Let Me Go/Scared of Beautiful

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=484089&ev=mb

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/41PwFUEt9XE3Cz0H8RA7vU?si=dajS-x4NT7aV7OsCg5ewXw

Review:

“Despite her blessings, Two Eleven often finds Brandy in romantically shaky situations, if not under self-imposed house arrest. In “Hardly Breathing,” she sings of having reached a breaking point as synths drip in the background like a leaky faucet. Elsewhere, on “Scared Of Beautiful,” co-written by Frank Ocean, the singer sighs as she takes stock of a lover’s lack of mirrors — to her, a sign that he’s refusing to see a good thing.

Two Eleven‘s songs are about being bedridden (“So Sick”), cursing the other women in his life (“Wish Your Love Away”), and, in rare weak moments, “painting” closets, faucets, the balcony “with our love.” What makes it all work, though, is how Brandy’s voice hints at strength that can only come with emotional distance. Its voice is tinged with regret, but it also has some bite, never sounding defeated for long.

Granted, Brandy isn’t a powerhouse vocalist like Whitney was. But while her voice isn’t muscular, it certainly is agile. Fortunately, she teamed up here with a slew of new-to-her producers and songwriters (Rico Love, MIDI Mafia, Sean Garrett, Mario Winans, etc.) who know how to play up her strengths. “Slower” (as in how he should act in bed) owes a sizable debt to Justin Timberlake‘s “My Love,” although Brandy raps through her compliments and directions faster than T.I. did. The Lykke Li-sampling “Let Me Go” is particularly infectious because of its skipping, hiccuping chorus: “B-b-b-let me go, b-b-b-baby don’t you let me.” And even in the pulsing “So Sick,” Brandy alternates between coasting and scattering through her grievances, tugging at her voice as if it was strapped to a leash.

“Just wanted someone real to love me for me / me, just Brandy,” the singer declares at one point on Two Eleven. She’s singing to a new beau, but her words also make for an apt statement to fans, if not critics who’ve heard her since age 15. She may have felt hard-pressed to emphasize the album’s firm R&B roots, but what’s more important is that for once, she doesn’t sound hard-pressed to play a wholesome role, or some hyper-idealized version of herself. Here, she’s just Brandy” – Idolator

Choice Cut: Wildest Dreams

The Underrated Gem

 

Human

Release Date: 5th December, 2008

Labels: Epic/Knockout/Koch

Producers: Chase N. Cashe/Dirty Swift/Dernst ‘D'Mile’ Emile/Toby Gad/Hit-Boy/Rodney ‘Darkchild’ Jerkins/Brian Kennedy/Bruno Mars/RedOne/Soundz/Dapo Torimiro/Bruce Wayne

Standout Tracks: Long Distance/Human/True

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=199735&ev=mb

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/5FzwCzwtVRuep9jjnhGpn4?si=aanAJGAyQ9mjrXc8_9gV_w

Review:

“Brandy Norwood, 29, has grown up in public, from perky multimillion-selling teenager and sitcom star to unwed mother and tenacious celebrity. Her 2004 album, “Afrodisiac,” pointedly addressed her breakup with her daughter’s father, to whom she had pretended to be married. In 2006 she was involved in a fatal freeway accident in which she was not charged as a criminal but faces a $50 million wrongful-death lawsuit. “Human,” the title song of her new album, sounds like special pleading as she sings, “I make mistakes but I can’t turn back time.”

On “Afrodisiac” Brandy changed her main producer — to Timbaland from Rodney Jerkins — and showed a wounded, embittered, almost unguarded side. Commercially it was a daring mistake; it was her first album not to sell at least a million copies.

She shifted labels and managers and took four years between albums and clearly decided to provide a pop product with “Human.” Mr. Jerkins has returned as the main producer, and the sentiments of the songs, whether self-affirming or heartbroken, are back to generic ones. “With you is where I’d rather be,” she sings in “Long Distance,” a hymnlike single that distantly echoes Janet Jackson’s “Again.”

In current R&B banal lyrics often arrive in wildly eccentric settings, and through her career Brandy has been a diligent and adaptable vehicle for the ideas of her producers, summoning multiple voices: light, raspy, breathy, sharp. Mr. Jerkins can be one of the most baroquely inventive R&B songwriters and producers, interlacing voices and instruments in dizzying patterns like those in “Right Here (Departed),” with its ricocheting vocal syncopations, or in “Torn Down,” with Brandy turning into countless overlapping vocal ensembles.

Yet for all the dexterity in the details, the songs too obviously strive for the familiar, imitating not just Ms. Jackson but Beyoncé, Alicia Keys and Mary J. Blige. Song titles like “Torn Down” and “Shattered Heart” show how much Brandy is trying to get serious, taking on an adult world where happily ever after is elusive. But she still comes across as a fledgling, a personality still being formed, eagerly tagging along after her role models” – The New York Times

Choice Cut: Right Here (Departed)

The Latest Album

 

B7

Release Date: 31st July, 2020

Labels: Brand Nue/One

Producers: Matthew Burnett/Darhyl ‘DJ’ Camper/LaShawn Daniels/Jordan Evans/Hit-Boy/Brandy Norwood/Cory Rooney/Alonzo ‘Lonnie’ Smalls II/Joshua ‘YXSH’ Thomas

Standout Tracks: Saving All My Love/No Tomorrow/Baby Mama (featuring Chance the Rapper)

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=1781476&ev=mb

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/09jppw0ufVFDiotrHDMK1w?si=c0vNRWOGTOih9Y7fg-KH6A

Review:

“Brandy is one of the few performers still standing who has unarguably shaped and moulded an entire genre. Releasing her debut album at the tender age of 15, she went on to eclipse 40 million sales worldwide, defining and re-defining pop tropes at will. Simply put, she’s one of R&B’s true icons, a Queen from the 90s Imperial phase. And now she’s back.

‘B7’ is a rich return, one that finds Brandy eschewing the culture of the feature to focus on herself, her life, and her artistry. Guests are carefully picked - Sy’Rai, Chance the Rapper, and the sometimes-cancelled Daniel Caesar – but only ever to amplify the song and the message; the central voice is hers, with Brandy sitting at the centre of her own creative solar system.

Opening with the exceptionally beautiful ‘Save All My Love’ the album is marked out as personal, cutting a little deeper than most. A rush of emotion that tackles self-worth, motherhood, and a whole lot more, by the time we reach bluntly titled closer ‘Bye Bipolar’ we’re left to wonder, has she ever been as explicitly honest as this?

‘All My Life’ (Parts One and Two) is a supreme act of soulful autobiography, but while she’s open about the struggles she’s been through, Brandy places emphasis on her optimistic aspects. ‘B7’ is weighted by statements of affirmation, with ‘I Am More’ and ‘Rather Be’ becoming mantra-like motions towards positive manifestation.

‘High Heels’ ushers its way towards sheer joy, with Brandy linking up alongside Sy’Rai to dance into the inky twilight. ‘Say Something’ is a poem about communication, while the itchily infectious ‘Baby Mama’ finds Brandy sparring alongside Chance the Rapper on a potent ode to motherhood.

The long-awaited follow up to 2012’s ‘Two Eleven’, ‘B7’ is perhaps a little overlong. Mid-album cuts such as ‘Borderline’ are no more than nice – pleasing on the ear, tugging at the heartstrings, but failing to match the gravitational pull of the record’s true highlights.

That being said, ‘B7’ is a triumph. A record worth savouring, it sits alongside NewGen R&B talent – step forward ChloexHalle, we see you Kiana Lede – while retaining that classic touch. A master of the form, it’s a joy to have Brandy back in our lives” – CLASH

Choice Cut: Borderline

FEATURE: Spotlight: Elkka

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Elkka

___________

A D.J, producer, artist and label boss…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Alex Lambert

Elkka is someone who is among the most multi-talented and strongest talents around. Her recent E.P., Harmonic Frequencies, is amazing. Euphoric Melodies, released earlier in the year, is another stunning E.P. I am going to come to the present-day in a bit. Before that, I want to spotlight a DJ Mag. This was at the stage when Elkka released the E.P., Every Body Is Welcome:

“ON ELKKA’s new EP, there’s a slow-burning house track based on a sample of Laurie Anderson, the New York performance artist who had a surprise hit with ‘O Superman’. Everyone wants to know exactly what kind of artist I am, Anderson sighs, as ‘Avant Garde’ builds to a climax: “Who cares?” This is the kind of DGAF attitude — sampled, chopped and placed on a Floorplan-esque pedestal — that sums up where Elkka is at right now.

It wasn’t always this way. The Cardiff-born musician spent many gruelling years behind the scenes, trying to crack the industry as a pop songwriter. But four years after abandoning the studio sessions to go it alone, Elkka has built a miniature empire — producing, DJing, throwing parties and running a label under the banner femme culture. “Laurie Anderson does whatever the fuck she wants,” Elkka explains, chatting from her home in South London. “I’ve always been obsessed with strong, charismatic women who fight for what they want and push the boundaries. I cared for so long about what people thought about me — is the music cool? Are people going to judge me for what I’ve done in the past? So that statement — ‘who cares?’ — was so important for me.”

She’s also borrowed the purring voice of soul singer Eartha Kitt, who appears on the dreamy ‘LVURSLF’ to announce, “I fall in love with myself and I want someone to share it with me.” These are the women that power ‘Every Body Is Welcome’, an EP that confirms Elkka’s transformation from peppy dance-pop songwriter to self-taught producer of dancefloor dominators. Her love of classic house is on display throughout, from the tracky intensity of ‘Avant Garde’, with its nod to DJ Pierre’s Wild Pitch remixes, to the acid-tinged celebration of the title track— an astrology-themed call-and-response anthem. What is it about queer girls and horoscopes? Elkka howls in recognition. “I’m always desperately trying to write a queer anthem,” she laughs. “The queer origins of house in Chicago and New York resonated with me so much when I sat down to write. I wanted to make something that was euphoric and celebratory of all of those things.”

Now 30, Elkka spent much of her twenties in recording studios, “rebounding from producer to producer, never feeling comfortable and in control”. She remembers being jealous of the producers in charge of the sessions but lacking the confidence to follow her own path. “That uncertainty allows people to take control from you. They sense that they don’t know yourself,” she remembers. In seven years, she never once worked with a female producer. “At some point I realised this wasn’t going to produce a body of work that was substantial and unique.” So in 2015 she quit the pop sessions and set out on her own “fake it ‘til you make it” journey”.

I would encourage a deep dive of Elkka’s work for anyone that is new. Across her E.P.s and singles, there is so much work one can immerse themselves in. I have watched her videos online and read interviews with her. She is such an engrossing and exceptional talent who will only grow bigger and more popular. I have put social media links at the bottom so that one can follow her. Glamcult interviewed Elkka and gave some focus to her own label, femme culture. They also asked her what it was like being a Queer artist:

“Not to promote unhealthy behaviour, but we when we obsess over something or someone, it’s vigorous and it lasts. And if you’ve recently checked our Spotify favourite artists, you’re perhaps already in the know that our ears (and hearts) cannot take enough of one particular artist: Elkka. More than just your typical, fleeting DJ obsession, the London-based artist is actively building the blocks for a better tomorrow. Last Friday, Elkka released her first record, “Everybody is Welcome”, under her own label femme culture. Alongside its absolute dedication to feel-good vibes, the EP embodies a message of community building for LGBT+ individuals within the music industry, but also for everyone in need of space of freedom and acceptance. Glamcult caught up with Elkka right after the release, for a chat on the urgency of idealism, her recent (and giant) b2b2b with Jamie xx, and pop stars.

PHOTO CREDIT: Alex Lambert 

Diving straight into the deep: you describe yourself as a woman and a queer person. How do these identities interact within you and each other?

It’s a conversation I have with myself regularly, because I put that forward quite clearly and it’s a really big part of my identity. I was having this discussion with myself of how I wanted to be identified as a human being and as an artist, and that seems to be the front of everything I say and do. So, I questioned it for a minute. Do I want to be defined by being a woman and/or being a queer person? Actually, yes. [Laughs] I do, because it informs so much about who I am and about the people I surround myself with, about the things I enjoy, the life I want to lead. I always knew I was a woman, but before realizing I was queer, I was very lost as a human being and had quite a different life. So, in discovering that and finding myself and finding who I really was and not being scared of that, that was such a liberating thing, such an important thing and at the front of who I am. I’m quite proud of that. I wouldn’t change it for the world. I love being a woman and I love being queer.

How would you define queer?

It’s very personal, very specific to each person. For me, I think queer is “other”. I think what’s beautiful about being able to label yourself as queer, if you want to label yourself, is that you don’t actually have to define, specifically, what you are in that bracket. I know I’m queer, but my identity changes, day to day, week to week, month to month of what I am within that bracket, so I love that it gives me freedom as well.

How do you think your label, femme culture, is having a positive impact?

We’re a small label; we just try to positively contribute to the landscape of the music industry and the arts world. Impact feels like such a big word, but I hope we’re having an impact. I think what’s at the heart of what we do, alongside championing women, and womxn, non-binary people and the LGBT+ community, is bring a sense of community. I really feel like London and, generally, society for young people can be quite isolating in some respects, whether it’s through social media or something else. We live a very different life than twenty years ago, and it’s a good thing in so many respects, but I also feel like that sense of community has kind of changed. Part of the reason I set up “femme culture” originally is, alongside championing the mentioned groups and enabling them to create their own platform, that I wanted to connect with real people. I think that our parties and events represent the heart of what we do. We want everybody to feel included; we’re fighting for balance for everybody. It’s called “femme culture”, but in some way that doesn’t cover what we really stand for, which is for everybody to have their place and space, and feel welcome. I hope we have a small impact to encourage that way of thinking and being.

Do you remember the moment when you decided, “I’m going to start this label”?

The moment this thought process started was probably when I was going to a Jamie xx concert in Brixton, in London, with my girlfriend. He’s someone who I really admire. I just came from another session with another producer, you know the 100th one, just going there and writing these “OK” tracks, but not feeling really heard or like I was progressing as a solo musician. I was doing well as a writer, but my own artistry was getting lost completely, and I just cried, I completely broke down. I was like, “This isn’t working, I can’t do this, I’m not going anywhere”. I was aware enough to realize that this wasn’t going to work like this, so something had to change. We didn’t go to see Jamie xx. I couldn’t see him and I felt like I couldn’t go listen for two hours to someone I really admire so much, but feel so far away from. So, we didn’t go. Next day, I started producing for myself and that was really the beginning of me as an artist. Then, I spent a year putting the EP together alongside a friend of mine. I then found a distributer, but they need you to put a name of your label. I didn’t even think of the fact that I was setting up a label, but on paper I was. Like with everything I do, it has to have some thought behind it. If something’s going to represent me, even if it’s a label name, I really want it to be meaningful. And I stumbled across femme culture, it seemed to represent me as an artist and I knew that I wanted to do something beyond myself. So, that’s how it came about and it blossomed from there. It became obvious that it should be some kind of collective, a community, and that it should be for people that we’re trying to represent as well. That was kind of a turning point for me.

PHOTO CREDIT: Alex Lambert 

How was coming to age in London for you?

I came to London straight. [Laughs] I didn’t know who I was at all. I guess the first few years of living in London I lived a very different kind of life. What London allowed me to do was to tap into a community of people that were similar to whom I was becoming. I grew up in Cardiff, which is a fair-sized city in Wales, and I studied in Bath, which is also quite small. I had friends that thought very differently from how I did, and the more I discovered who I was, the more I realized how different our paths were going to be. Slowly finding people with whom you connect with, that make sense to you as a human being, was the most incredible thing. Now, I’m very lucky to live in a city where I have lots of great friends, a girlfriend too; it’s a great place to be creative, it’s very cosmopolitan and I need that in my life. I want to be somewhere where everybody is welcome, ha! [Laughs]. Oh, that was so bad. I come from Jewish immigrant grandparents and it really resonates with me being somewhere, where everybody can find a place, especially now more than ever, with what’s going on in the UK and everywhere else in the world. So, I guess London gave me that freedom.

I am going to end with a recent NME interview. Before that, I would steer people towards the new E.P., Harmonic Frequencies. The reviews I have seen of it are very positive and glowing. Even though her music mixes House, Electronic and other genres, it is dreamy and physical. There is something in there for any music fan. This is what Resident Advisor had to say about one of the best E.P.s of this year:

“Dance music's capacity to heal is a real thing. Artists like Elkka are in the business of harnessing and redirecting energy at will, and at their best they can shift the mood of a room with the flick of a wrist (or the turn of a knob). "Harmonic Frequencies," the title track from her upcoming EP, is pure euphoria bottled into a skippy house cut. "With this track, I think you can feel the pent-up energy that exploded out of everyone when we were able to reunite and dance together again," Elkka says in the liner notes. It's a musical oasis, one that appeared to her in a desert of pandemic-induced inactivity”.

I want to finish with that NME interview. One can tell how instinctive music is to Elkka. She creates this whole world with her sounds. You can get lost in what she puts out! Among other things, Elkka was asked about club culture and euphoria:

“For Elkka, making music is so ingrained in her that she thinks it’s somewhere in her DNA. “I remember sitting in a car with my best mates, we were probably 11 or 12, and I was trying to explain the concept of – I know music is what I’m gonna do, but where is this coming from?” In the same way that people talk about a vocation to become a doctor, the Cardiff-born producer always knew she was going to be a musician: “I really can’t imagine doing anything else,” she says. “I think that has kept me going to this point. There were moments where I could’ve easily gone and chose a different path that would have been so much more comfortable and less traumatic, but that deep-down feeling of this is what I’m meant to be doing has kept me moving forward.”

Where previous EPs for Local Action [India Jordan] and the femme culture label she co-runs put vocal samples front and centre, ‘Euphoric Melodies’ uses them more subtly for texture and to evoke feeling. ‘Alexandra’, a track dedicated to Elkka’s girlfriend, builds gradually with meandering synths and UK garage-like vocal chops. The entire record glints with flashes of melody and pointillist rhythms, just like a DJ set that keeps you locked in. Closer ‘Morning Fuzz’ then plays out like a shutters-up end of the night anthem for when the sun peeks in.

When she started work on it, before the pandemic kicked in, Elkka had been interested in the idea of euphoria: “What moments when I’m writing something, or DJing, what does it do for me? Why do I get that feeling?” But all the things that had previously made her feel good, not only music, but touch, intimacy, family and friends, were taken away. She tears up when talking about her mum, whose name is proudly tattooed on her arm, lovingly describing her as a “pioneer” and a “hero”. The EP, then, became about missing the things we previously took for granted.

For years, Elkka forged a different path before making the boundary-pushing electronic music she does today, that stands up next to the likes of Four Tet, Kelly Lee Owens and Floating Points, who have all championed her work. She’d always wanted to be a pop star, idolising Britney when she was little (“free Britney!” she adds), and started out vocaling dance-pop tracks. But over the years the producers she worked with were almost entirely male, and she came to realise that she’d rather be doing their job. Her own production journey was a process of growing self-belief and of rejecting the internalised message that producing and DJing was for boys.

Adequate representation to Elkka is vital, as a proud member of the LGBTQIA+ community. The queer origins of house music in Chicago and New York resonated with her and the dancefloor played a huge part in her coming out and accepting her sexuality. “I was actually quite a uptight teenager and young adult, because I wasn’t very comfortable in my own skin, and probably repressing the fact that I was a queer woman,” she says. When she moved to London in her 20s, a housemate took her to her first proper rave with thousands of people. It was a pivotal moment. “I loved it,” she glows.

Discovering club culture coincided with her discovering who she was: “Because with raving, you’re connected in more ways than you realise. You’ve chosen to be there because you like the music, the kind of people there, the space… That gave me the confidence to be who I was, and not repress it any more”.

A tremendous composer, D.J. and artist, go and follow Elkka and invest in her work. She is someone I discovered recently, but I have been really affected by her music. She can produce music and sounds that are so transformative and emotional. She is a sensational talent who will be around and making brilliant music…

FOR decades more.

____________

Follow Elkka

FEATURE: Modern Heroines: Part Eighty: The Anchoress

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern Heroines

 PHOTO CREDIT: Lily Warring 

Part Eighty: The Anchoress

___________

FOR this eightieth part…

 PHOTO CREDIT: The Anchoress (Catherine Anne Davies)

of my Modern Heroines feature, I am saluting a woman I have a tonne of respect for. Welsh producer, artist and all-round inspiration Catherine Anne Davies is otherwise known as The Anchoress. She released one of this year’s best albums., The Art of Losing, on 12th March. I would encourage anyone to get the album. Davies has been unable to tour the album, as she is clinically vulnerable and the pandemic means that tour dates have been pushed to next year. In fact, the first date – in my hometown of Guildford – comes almost a year to day after the release of The Art of Losing. On 11th March, 2022 you can go and see her at The Boileroom. The effect of Brexit has caused issue when it comes to the supplying and delivering the album to fans in Europe. I am referring to Davies as The Anchoress, as I am celebrating the artist and, therefore, her moniker is the one I am going to employ. As Catherine Anne Davies, she spoke with NME earlier in the year about some of the issues faced. Let’s hope that things improve in 2022 in terms of the supply chain and the pandemic. I know that many are looking forward to seeing The Anchoress perform. She is an amazing artist I have been following a while (and one whom I interviewed earlier in the year). Like I do with these features, it is a combination of interviews and reviews of the current album. I am ending with a playlist of the best tracks so far from The Anchoress.

The first interview that I want to highlight is from The Indiependent. Five years after the lauded debut album, Confessions of a Romance Novelist, The Art of Losing took The Anchoress to new heights. It is interesting reading her talk about the album:

“The Indiependent: That’s the bottom line, isn’t it? So, it’s been five years since your last album but you haven’t stopped. You’ve toured with Simple Minds. You’ve toured with the Manics obviously and collaborated with them, and also you released an album with Bernard Butler that came out last year. Do you feel you have to be writing music? Or do you just have to be working in general? Because you’ve said before that you came into music  accidentally, it just sort of happened.

The Anchoress: Yeah, I mean, I finished The Art of Losing in the beginning of 2019. So it was due to come out the year before. And then it came out in 2021 so obviously, it was really exciting, even though for me obviously there wasn’t hardly any gap. I know I wasn’t sitting around twiddling my thumbs at any point but it feels like a really long time since the first record. It’s so strange, and then releasing a record when you’re not really engaging with the outside world is also very bizarre so obviously had like all these amazing reviews and pride but I’m not gonna go to a record shop and see it in a record shop, which is just weird. I think I do like to be busy, I like to be occupied. I’ve got quite a busy brain. I don’t like holidays, either. I’m not a fan of going on holiday. And I enjoy work, whatever that may be. And I’ve always been a bit like that. When I was at university I did two degrees at the same time because I didn’t feel occupied, and I did my PhD when I was making the first record as well. I think I like to be busy. And that’s been quite challenging, actually, during lockdown. Obviously, I’m super lucky that I’ve got the studio here to work in. But it is one kind of work only and obviously then you’re limited in terms of not being able to have people working here with. I’ve been forced to take a little bit of time out, which I think has been good for me.

The Indiependent: The thing that really struck me is that not only is it such a different sound from your debut, but even within the album itself, there are completely different sounds—’Moon Rise’, ‘Show Your Face’—is that a conscious decision? Is that deliberate? Or is it just what feels right at the time for you

The Anchoress: That’s just how music comes out of me. I do think this and Confessions of a Romance Novelist are similar in a way to that because obviously you’ve got tracks with slow piano, atmospheric kind of pieces, then ‘One for Sorrow’, which is almost like a pop-funk track. I think I’ve always wanted to make sure that I only do the kind of music that I enjoy, and because I love everything from Prince to Max Richter that’s going to come out in the music that I make.

I’m very lucky because I licence my albums to a label. So I’ve got no one breathing down my neck saying we want 10 radio friendly tracks, but we want 10 you know progressive rock tracks, I can just do precisely what I want. So the album’s just sound that various because I have that many different interests in music. I think I would be really bored to make an album of 10 songs that sounded very similar. So I’m just indulging my own musical tastes really. It’s not conscious. I just  think of each track as an individual world. So like with ‘Moon Rise’, for instance, it was just like, I really want to do this, and I’m just gonna do this, I don’t think about the other track at the same time. And then when I was doing ‘Show Your Face’, I was really obsessed with the OB six synthesiser that I just bought, so I just became super focused on the single track. I’m autistic so I think that that’s partly to do with the way that my brain works — I have this just hyperfocus. I’m unable to shut everything out and maybe that is why I don’t consider whether one track relates to another. Somehow it does hang together as a finished piece.

The Indiependent: You’ve mentioned before that this album draws on a lot of the recent trauma that you’ve had in the last few years. So did you find this a cathartic experience or an escape from that? Or was it both?

The Anchoress: It was a little bit of both, maybe, but I think ultimately it wasn’t cathartic. I think therapy is for that. As usual, work is a distraction for me, and it just was the only answer in the moment of experiencing all these really difficult things. But it also became a working through of past trauma as well. Interestingly, and I don’t think I had consciously realised that until I was kind of up to the point where I’m thinking about putting ‘5am’ on the record. So it became more than just a record of what I’ve been going through in those couple of years. I really shy away from the idea of songwriting as cathartic, because I think I’m always trying to serve the listener, it’s not about me serving myself — as I say, therapy is the space for your catharsis and not a public arena. I guess I was still very conscious of only wanting to share as much as I wanted to within the songs and still having those boundaries. They’re safe boundaries for yourself, you know, not wanting everybody to know every detail about your life. It’s a really strange dance, I think, between catharsis and distraction.

The Indiependent: One thing this album does is that whilst of course, no one can relate directly to your experiences and what it is you’re singing about, the album conveys those emotions and those raw feelings so brilliantly. I’m just wondering, where do you tend to draw your inspiration from? Is it entirely personal?

The Anchoress: I’m a bit like a sponge and I really do believe that you’ve got to inhale enough stuff to have things of interest to then exhale. You know, it’s literature, it’s music, it’s films, it’s conversations that I overhear, or documentaries or podcasts. It’s everything, but not in a kind of conscious magpie sense. It’s just they’ll all inform how I’m processing a particular theme or concept or idea. But I think this album obviously was much more personally inspired than anything that I’ve done before. It’s interesting, having started out my career as The Anchoress with quite a conscious intention to avoid the confessional, hence the title of the first album [Confessions of a Romance Novelist], I really didn’t want to write confessional, autobiographical work and obviously, I couldn’t have foreseen that I would end up writing this record. I had actually started a completely different album beforehand but you’ve got to follow where the muse takes you. You’ve got to be led by where the art takes you and also to do something that’s uncomfortable. I think it was always super uncomfortable for me to talk about myself and so that feels enormously satisfying to have to have done that over a whole album’s worth of work, and for it to have been so well received. I think it’s especially difficult for women to do that in a songwriting arena, because often diaristic autobiographically-led work can tend to be  evaluated in a more pejorative way than perhaps men. We look at the difference between the way that we talk about Bob Dylan’s lyricism versus Tori Amos or Alanis Morissett. There’s such a lot of subtle misogyny that goes on there and I think that really informed me when I was starting out in not wanting to be autobiographical. So it’s nice to get to that point where I’ve recognised that there’s a lot of skill, and there was a lot of difficulty in creating good autobiographical work and throwing off those shackles of “Oh god, what if people say that it’s diaristic? Or like, Tori Amos or something like that?”. So I’ve been on a kind of journey with myself with that. Maybe I got rid of a little bit of my own internalised misogyny about what women can write about and be respected for”.

There is another quite detailed and deep interview that I learnt a lot from. Under the Radar Mag spoke with The Anchoress to get to the bottom and into the heart of a remarkable album:

“When did you first start writing the songs that would go on to become The Art of Losing? Was it always intended to be a record that dealt with personal trauma and grief?

So, the record was made in the latter part of 2018 and finished in the spring of 2019. It was originally meant to come out then but we’ve had this long delay so its nearly two years since it’s been finished. There’s a couple of songs on the record that had a prior genesis to that 2018/2019 period, but they were ones I felt fitted thematically and wanted to be resurrected and rethought. “The Heart Is a Lonesome Hunter” is a much older song. People that are familiar with my Catherine A.D. hand stitched, self-released CDs may be aware of the demo version of that. “With the Boys” was also something I started writing around the same time as that. It’s a 14-track record so obviously there’s a huge amount of new stuff that was written as well. But it also felt there were old songs that made themselves known they wanted to be finished and to be a part of that collection. So, it was all tied together. Those two songs—“With the Boys” especially—detailed my experiences with the misogynistic and patriarchal dynamics of the industry. Which is so interesting to see nearly a decade on how not much has changed from my earliest experiences. My intuition and gut feeling when writing that song aged 22 or 23 was spot on. “You gotta know what bruises are for if you want to play with the boys.” It’s still a boys club, very much so. Isn’t that frightening? Ten years on and nothing’s changed.

It’s really frightening, especially as the #metoo movement has identified and highlighted a lot of unacceptable and inappropriate behaviors throughout the music and entertainment industries. Yet for some reason, these people seem to be given a perennial free pass? Why do you think that is?

Money. When people are making money out of a situation, they’re much more likely to turn a blind eye. I think people delude themselves as well within the industry that they’re not being complicit with or enabling it. So, it ends up being nothing to do with them, or none of their business. Money makes people turn a blind eye. I think it’s as simple as that. Society is changing—albeit slowly—and more women are being encouraged to take up prominent roles in many industries yet within music nothing moves forwards.

There are small shifts. One of the things I think is really important is getting more women into studios. Where music is made, in these intimate and quite vulnerable environments. At the moment it’s 2% and rising, the number of women who are audio engineers in the UK. There’s a huge number of women who are feeling this is a safe space for them to be able to occupy and are also really interested in the technical side behind the scenes. That will have a huge impact on the safety of the environment, and the way women as artists will thrive as well. I get so many bands and artists who are women or have women as their main songwriter that want to work with me as a producer because they’re not getting the service, I’m offering them anywhere else. Not just a safe space, but also a different dynamic as well because it’s not about me and my ego. I’m not saying all producers who are men operate in that way but there can be a tendency to impress yourself at the center of it. Whereas I think women understand the relationship dynamics better. To me, being a producer is as much about being a therapist and understanding the dynamics of the people in the room as it is about understanding how to operate a mixing desk. As women, we are fundamentally very good at managing relationships and managing a room full of people. I actually think our gender is an advantage when it comes to being a producer.

One of the most startling aspects of the album is the range of sonics, styles and moods. It doesn’t follow any one specific sound or pattern. Was that always your intention, to disrupt the flow even rather than create something predictable or obvious?

I think that’s just naturally what I do as The Anchoress. The first album was very much a jukebox record as well, although I think it’s much less coherent or realized than this one. I love so many different kinds of music so it’s going to come through naturally. Also, I don’t have that record company pressure, or other band members, or another producer trying to push something into their expected format. A lot of albums are just expected to have one sound or one shape, one color or one pallet. That’s just never been something that interests me. I just make the records that I love, which by their very nature are multiplicitous. Taking in all of the things I love. Deftones, the Manics to Max Richter. They are a record of what I love and I always use them as a sonic playground. It was me setting out my stall with this album too, because I’d experienced that annoying misogynistic attitude towards the last record. Where assumptions were made about my workload, and my work skills. So, I wanted people to listen to it and know this is on me, this is what I can do. I wanted it to be ambitious. I wanted it to take in a huge, wide range of sounds, instruments and arrangements. It really is like a sonic CV. Come hire me as your producer because this is what I can do! Ultimately, I would be happiest in my studio producing records for other people. I’m not a natural performer.

Is that something you see yourself doing more of in the future, producing other artists?

Absolutely, it really is. But I’m still coming up against that glass ceiling. It’s amazing, even when other female artists have said to me privately, they’re desperate to work with a woman in the studio yet, ultimately, they end up going back to that male producer that people know or they’ve worked with before. It’s quite difficult to break the pattern, so I’m hoping this record sets out my stall and acts as a bit of a calling card. It’s really hard to break through when you’re spending other people’s budgets and they’re making the call about who’s going to produce their next record. Are they going to come to me or will those cultural presumptions prevail so they end up going with the guy who made that band’s record 10 years ago? You need that cultural authority, that stamp of approval from working with a big-name artist. Otherwise, it’s very difficult to make that leap from artist/producer to producer for others. I’m fighting. I’m fighting the good fight here!

“All Farewells Should Be Sudden” is one of the most harrowing but also moving pieces on the record, particularly with the church bells ringing at the end. Was it especially difficult to write and perform

Absolutely. It was written in the wake of my father’s death, thinking about what happens to us when we die. I wanted to explore the different religious constructions of the afterlife. What happens? Do you fold and do it all again? Are we reincarnated? I was obsessively watching the Denis Villeneuve film Arrival and thinking about that central conundrum it poses. If we know what suffering and loss we’re in for, do we make those decisions again? I don’t want to give away any spoilers for anyone that’s not seen the film but it sets that up as a kind of fundamental human question. Do we pursue suffering? Or if the price of love is suffering do we still pursue it? So, it was really exploring that in the two years after my dad died where I was deeply grief stricken. He was very young. He was only 59. He didn’t retire or get to do any of the things that he’d planned and it just felt so cruel.

It was so sudden. Just 16 weeks after we were standing in the queue at Greenwich Maritime Museum, and he couldn’t get the word for coffee. I knew something wasn’t right, then three weeks later he was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. So, it was 12 weeks after that he dropped dead very suddenly at home. Which is where the title comes from, “All Farewells Should Be Sudden.” The trauma in that; it wasn’t a prolonged illness. We barely had time to absorb the information before he was gone. He actually died when I was recording guitar for “My Confessor.” The very moment he passed away. That is memorialized in the record itself. I kept that original take and put it on the record because that felt important when I was finally able to return to it. My dad is deeply woven throughout the album. But it was less about writing a song specifically about him, and more about how do we process death. How do we process this kind of compulsion to think about what happens when we die? Do people come back? Will we see them again? Does religion help us? I guess I’m always in the mindset of what would the Manics do if they were writing a song about this. It is that piecing over of all of the different ideas around death then reincarnation and the afterlife that I wanted to look at in “All Farewells…”.

Another song which stands out for me as one of the most instantly touching pieces on the album is “Unravel.” What inspired you to write that song?

It’s about trying to unravel everything. The way that things we love drag us down. I never really think about what my songs are about. But I do think about which ones are the most difficult to produce and arrange and for this album, that was “Unravel.” I almost pulled it off the record because I wasn’t pleased with it, but now I’m glad I didn’t because its one of my favorite tracks on the album. I really wrestled with the arrangement. It wasn’t working and had too many synths on it so I stripped it right back down to just strings and piano. At one point it became this really dense, Cure-esque piece”.

Because The Art of Losing is one of the truly great albums of this year, it helps to prove that with some critical reviews. The Line of Best Fit were in no short supply of compliments when it came to The Anchoress’ stunning second album:

“With her debut, Davies took the place of a modern-day Kate Bush, which can feel like a lazy comparison but it should be held with high esteem given Confessions Of A Romance Novelist perfectly depicted being, and embracing, yourself. Following that up, after a fully booked diary not only supporting her album but hitting the road with Simple Minds, came before she knew it.

Recently, Davies has stated: “I found myself in the midst of such deep grief and sadness that I had more material, emotionally speaking, than any one person could need to draw on for a lifetime of songwriting.” It’s these depths that squarely erupt in a dedicated outpouring, appearing in various forms on The Art of Losing, but indeed wallowing isn’t one of them.

Instrumental opener “Moon Rise (Prelude)” holds that crystallising moment of grief first rearing its bittersweet head; where the world freezes, holding onto the last remnants of lives that are hell-bent on adapting and changing even when nothing could feel less natural.

A concept album this is not, but the with the veins running deep with recurring themes, as a second album, Davies has managed to construct a weighty signifier of impassable change. Certainly, when deep into the throes of a sun-kissed summer, this isn’t an album that can offer any further escape - it’s purposeful, it isn’t supposed to retain - this is an album for healing.

Packing a punch musically; twisting and turning; immersing with piano interludes branching elegantly from the albums introductory roots (“All Shall Be Well”), the softest nature is held for later cut “5am” which feels as vulnerable as it does honest.

The titular track, which Davies has referred to as the centrepiece of the album, comes packed with undulating synths and action-packed rattling drums to create a sense of befitting urgency. Manic Street Preachers' James Dean Bradfield comes in early doors on the whirring and raging, “The Exchange”, where the two’s voices find equal pegging in failed romance. “Unravel” concocts an eighties gift for all those ready to feast upon a buffet of delicate ethereal synths, tribal drums and emotional pleading “If you don’t want me / then I don’t want me”.

“My Confessor” is a reckoning which sees Davies bellowing “Is this love?”, leading nicely into the tapering off rear. There’s an air of exhaustion that echoes through the closing moments, where the fight, depending on the situation, finds a conclusion or leads back, ready for round one with the lunar bookend “Moon (An End)”, but not without a gentle, hopeful swell before a voice advises “For once in your life just let it go”.

Grief will always exist; in the truest of relationships, to the blood we wrenchingly say goodbye to. It’s as natural as the trees we watch wither and wilt on a yearly basis, but how we deal with it is up to us, and Davies’ fight back is well worth remembering in those times of grave need”.

To finish things off, one more review should prove what an inspiration artist The Anchoress is. I think that she will be a huge idol in the future. Catherine Anne Davies herself is one of our finest producers and musical voices. Someone always trying to make the industry better, The Anchoress is a wonderful artist we are very lucky to have! This is what CLASH observed about The Art of Losing:

“While ‘Confessions Of A Romance Novelist’ was by no means a shallow record, its odes to heartbreak and hardship were delivered with a theatrical, almost camp flair that complimented her novelistic way with words and love of drama. While ‘The Art of Losing’ hasn’t seen The Anchoress lose her taste for those big, Kate Bush flourishes to up the emotional stakes of her songs, there is a comparative sense of weight and seriousness given to the subject matter addressed here.

As its title suggests, this is a concept album about the sensation of loss - of reaching for something only to find it suddenly and irrevocably gone. For the first 20 minutes or so Davies largely embeds these feelings in radio-friendly, vaguely gothic bangers. ‘Show Your Face’ details the death of a friendship with someone who refuses to believe sexual assault victims, ‘The Exchange’ chronicles a loss of identity in a toxic relationship, while the title track confronts the societal taboo surrounding the discussion of miscarriages, a heavy and very personal subject to Davis that she nevertheless prevents from becoming too cutting by employing a bouncy melody and the hook from Depeche Mode’s ‘Shake The Disease’.

From ‘Paris’ onwards, however, the gloves are taken off. The production is stripped back to just piano and strings (which comes as a relief, as her Achilles’ heel when producing herself is a propensity for squeezing every cool instrument in her studio onto each track), and Davies allows her powerful voice to take centre stage. ‘5am’ is a true showstopper of a song that calmly revisits three of her most horrific memories, each of which Davies depicts with barbed-wire honesty: the hollow end of a love affair, the traumatic and non-consensual loss of her virginity, the truly distressing hospital trip that ends in a miscarriage.

This combination of poignancy and dull rage persists until the end of the record on an incredible run of tracks that ends with ‘With The Boys’, a savage indictment of her experience as a capable woman working in the patronising, testosterone-drenched world of music production (“Got to be good, got to be certain if she wants to play with the boys,” sneers the chorus).

Like it’s predecessor, ‘Art Of Losing’ is lent an air of grandiosity by the plethora of authors Dr Catherine Anne Davies (PhD Literature and Queer Theory) references throughout: Carson McCullers, Lord Byron, Julian of Norwich, etc. This time around, however, there is never any doubt in her authorial voice and ability to commandingly tell her own story, with all the tragedies and triumphs contained therein”.

One of this country’s very best artists, the incredible The Anchoress is someone who will continue to make such compelling and memorable music. Heading on tour next year, do go and see her if you can. The Art of Losing is in my top ten albums of this year. A top 40 hit that showcased her magnificent songwriting and production talent, The Anchoress is…

A national treasure.